Unforeseen Consequences: The Role of Law and Policy in Exacerbating Sudan’s Displacement Crisis
A Sudanese refugee camp near the Chadian border, January 24, 2025. Photo courtesy of Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
Introduction
The Sudanese Civil War has triggered a devastating migration and refugee crisis, with millions displaced internally and across borders. These overwhelmed regions have become hotspots for violence and abuse, particularly by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Domestically, Sudan’s poorly enforced anti-trafficking laws leave civilians vulnerable to forced labor, child recruitment, and systemic exploitation. Internationally, initiatives like the European Union’s Khartoum Process have prioritized containment over human rights, enabling armed groups to brutalize migrants. Compounding these failures, Sudan’s refusal to ratify the Kampala Convention has left internally displaced persons (IDPs) without adequate protections, further amplifying tensions and violence within the country. These failures highlight how poor legal frameworks have economically and politically enabled the Sudanese humanitarian crisis.
Historical Context
Sudan emerged from British-Egyptian colonial rule in 1956 as a deeply divided and conflict-riddled nation. Omar al-Bashir seized power through a coup d'état in 1989 and presided over an authoritarian regime for three decades. Under his rule, Sudan underwent the Darfur Genocide in 2003 and the secession of South Sudan in 2011. Al-Bashir also intensified internal divisions through the use of brutal paramilitary groups called Janjaweed militias, from which the RSF evolved. His ousting in 2019 briefly inspired hope for a democratic transition, but the military and RSF hijacked the process in a 2021 coup. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), a longstanding government militia led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, turned on each other in April 2023, plunging Sudan into its current civil war.
The humanitarian consequences of the Sudanese Civil War have been devastating. It has displaced over 11 million people—the most of any armed conflict in the world—and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. Amongst the most brutalized populations in the conflict have been refugees and IDPs. The RSF has abused its power over border regions to engage in unlawful killings, sexual assault, and other crimes against humanity. The international community has desperately attempted to broker a peace deal between these two forces, while domestic and international laws have sought to address these grave circumstances. However, such efforts have overwhelmingly failed in practice, disregarding important opportunities for progress and even backfiring against the Sudanese people. This has enabled one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the 21st century.
Domestic Human Trafficking Law
Sudan has implemented certain measures designed to combat human rights violations in light of its status as an epicenter of human trafficking and other injustices. The 2014 Combating of Human Trafficking Act criminalized sex and labor trafficking, while Article 14 of the 2007 Sudan Armed Forces Act prohibited child soldier recruitment and various forms of civilian exploitation. On paper, these laws provided a framework to address trafficking and abuse, but in practice, they have been nearly useless. The Sudanese government has failed to address the plight of vulnerable populations, such as refugees and IDPs, during its civil war.
According to a report from the U.S. State Department, from 2022 to 2023, Sudan did manage to identify twelve potential trafficking victims. However small, this figure at least represented an acknowledgment of institutional responsibilities. Unfortunately, the government dropped even this superficial commitment shortly thereafter; in the 2023-24 reporting period, it did not investigate a single case of human trafficking, forced recruitment, or use of child soldiers. Over the same time frame, Sudan failed to implement any recommended protective measures for trafficking victims, such as victim identification or referral to trauma care. Moreover, the State Department report notes that the Sudanese government has “ceased prior initiatives to inform and educate the public on trafficking,” further limiting its indirect protections of refugees and IDPs from abuse. These circumstances undermine Sudan’s ostensibly praiseworthy introduction of human rights law in the 2010s.
This lack of implementation has allowed trafficking and forced labor to flourish, particularly among IDPs and migrants, who remain highly vulnerable to exploitation. External organizations such as Amnesty International have stressed the RSF’s egregious detainment and abuse of human trafficking victims, as well as their corrupt complicity and even active participation in the practice, for over a decade. Now, with heightened conflict and even fewer risks of legal repercussions, this unchecked malpractice has become even more prevalent. The government’s consistent failure to carry out procedures for victim identification, combined with its neglect of public education initiatives, has enabled the continuous suffering of IDPs. This systemic inaction demonstrates how legal frameworks are only as effective as the institutions that uphold them.
International Humanitarian Frameworks
While Sudan’s domestic policy has failed to maintain standards of conduct toward displaced and trafficked peoples, the government has also missed a key opportunity to implement accountability from abroad. The Kampala Convention was designed to increase protections for African IDPs by transforming the UN’s nonbinding Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement into obligations under international law. Signatory nations agreed to assess their respective root causes of internal displacement, assist IDPs, and provide sustainable solutions to rebuilding plighted communities. The convention outlines several enforcement mechanisms, including a Conference of State Parties to oversee compliance and a formal appeals system for addressing violations or disputes before the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. Sudan is one of only eleven African nations to not have even signed the convention, let alone ratified it, leaving millions of civilians without recourse to its protections.
Critics argue that the ratification of the Kampala Convention would be nothing more than another ineffective strategy that, similar to domestic anti-trafficking laws, would not have produced any substantive change toward the treatment of IDPs in Sudan. However, such criticisms of the document often underestimate the significance of its Article 12, which renders governments liable to make reparations to IDPs for abuse they endured or were not protected from. The potential for violations of the agreement to cause financial and international legal headaches for the Sudanese government could very well have caused them to implement Sudanese IDP protections, whose absence is now so glaring nearly 13 years later.
Elsewhere in Africa, the convention has demonstrated both symbolic and tangible impacts. Its framework for protecting and assisting IDPs has served as a baseline for research and training for prominent foreign aid organizations like the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), and has guided important projects in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and beyond. The Kampala Convention has also fostered policy collaboration between the African Union (AU) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on IDP issues. The AU even designated 2019 as the Year of Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons in Africa on the convention’s tenth anniversary, exemplifying the subject’s increased presence in political discourse. Additionally, measurable disparities exist between ratifying and non-ratifying nations. At least seven ratifiers have used the convention to shape domestic IDP policies that align with modern standards in terminology, environmental considerations, and external cooperation. In contrast, Africa’s three largest IDP populations as of late 2024—in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia—all belong to countries that have either not ratified the Kampala Convention or were extremely late in doing so. Although many other factors are influential in forming these statistics, the Kampala Convention has proved itself to be much more than simply performative.
Sudan’s failure to implement the convention underscores its longstanding neglect of IDPs, for which its innocent citizens have paid the price. While the convention’s potential impact in Sudan remains uncertain, it would have at least granted IDPs more legal power and offered opportunities for international humanitarian partnership. On a global scale, this situation reflects the challenging yet crucial task of enforcing international legal frameworks in conflict zones, where governments often prioritize military dominance over the needs of civilians.
Damaging International Involvement
Trans-national and trans-continental institutions have also greatly magnified the human cost of the Sudanese Civil War. For example, the Khartoum Process, launched in 2014 by the European Union (EU), has plagued displaced people in Sudan by awarding the wrong power to the wrong groups. This initiative focused on combating human trafficking and smuggling by attempting to contain the migration flows from East Africa that could ultimately reach Europe. The program supported Sudan’s refugee protection and displacement prevention efforts, efforts which fell directly under the jurisdiction of the RSF and other Janjaweed militias. While experts remain uncertain about these groups’ exact responsibilities at the time, the RSF was undoubtedly involved in border control and engaged in human rights violations, raising serious concerns about the Khartoum Process.
The EU Commission further entrenched these effects in 2016, when it adopted a Special Measure to distribute EUR 160 million to Sudan, and the Better Migration Management Program to send an additional EUR 40 million to the region. These efforts were allegedly launched in support of displaced people and communities. However, as leaked confidential documents later revealed, the EU secretly marked funds to equip and train Sudanese border authorities, the exact duty which had been delegated to the RSF. European countries have downplayed and denied their involvement in funding the RSF, claiming that their money was never intended to support the forces or other controversial groups. Regardless of their knowledge of the misplaced funds, the fact remains that the Khartoum Process and its subsequent measures offered virtually no framework to monitor how funds meant for Sudan were distributed. The EU’s self-proclaimed ignorance does not justify its actions.
Practices to curb human rights-related migration have only become more widespread since Europe’s project. The EU’s original project framework includes a commitment to provide Sudan with “training for immigration and other border management officials and border police officers,” as well as technical support including “computers, cameras, scanners, servers, cars, [and] aircraft.” This framework was later emboldened with supportive measures. In 2016, exactly coinciding with two such initiatives to strengthen Sudanese migration control funding, the government redeployed the RSF along the country’s borders. Since then, the forces have worked to consolidate power over these regions for economic and political gains. This effort has largely involved corruption and systematic human rights abuses, including the sale of migrants to traffickers who subject them to forced labor, enslavement, and torture.
The EU’s prioritization of containment rather than human rights has allowed the Sudanese government and the RSF to exploit its provisions. The Khartoum Process and its reinforcing initiatives have financially and technologically empowered a group known for its violent suppression of refugees and IDPs by either ignoring or accepting the RSF’s role as enforcers of border security. The RSF—likely benefiting from recent EU support—used the funding program to carry out human rights atrocities the same year it was strengthened. These abuses include a slaughter in North Darfur that claimed the lives of 139 people, including 34 women and 39 children. The failed effort exemplifies how poorly designed international migration frameworks can worsen humanitarian crises rather than resolve them. Despite its stated objectives, the EU ultimately left refugees and IDPs even more vulnerable to violence and trafficking. This failure reflects a broader pattern of flawed migration policies in and out of Sudan that worsen displacement crises, strengthen criminal organizations, and reinforce cycles of abuse and violence against vulnerable populations.
Conclusion
Sudan’s massive displacement crisis amidst its ongoing civil war demonstrates the devastating consequences of ineffective and absent policies. From inadequate enforcement of anti-trafficking laws to the failure to ratify the Kampala Convention and the harmful implementation of the Khartoum Process, these legal and policy failures have enabled the suffering of innocent civilians, including refugees, internally displaced persons, and migrants. Each example highlights how domestic and international frameworks intended to protect these groups have instead allowed for systemic exploitation, human rights abuses, and further destabilization of an already fragile nation.
These failures underscore the urgent need for migration policies that prioritize human rights and accountability over political expediency and containment. Addressing the Sudanese civil war’s humanitarian toll requires not only robust domestic reforms but also greater legal initiatives to respect and protect the displaced. The gap between policy intentions and outcomes is often a matter of political will and enforcement. Bridging this gap is essential to mitigating the suffering of Sudan’s displaced populations and preventing further conflict escalation.
Graham Owens (‘27) is a student at the University of Pennsylvania. He is studying International Relations with aspirations to attend law school.