Danielle Cohen Immigration Law Solicitors Limited | View firm profile
Sudan’s civil war feels like a tragic echo of the questions posed more than fifty years ago in “What’s Going On”, my favourite concept album of all time—a work that remains painfully relevant in moments like this. Just as Marvin Gaye framed war, injustice, and social breakdown through a lens of sorrow and moral urgency, Sudan today is trapped in a devastating cycle where ordinary people bear the heaviest costs of prolonged violence. The album’s quiet, anguished plea for empathy mirrors the scenes emerging from Khartoum and Darfur: families displaced, cities hollowed out, and a population left asking “what’s going on?”.
Sudan is a country of approximately 50 million people located in north-east Africa and is the third largest on the continent by land area after Algeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The capital is Khartoum, located at the junction of the Blue Nile and the White Nile rivers in the centre of the country.
The country has been beset by conflict since gaining independence from the UK and Egypt in 1956. A civil war spanning 1983 to 2005 between the country’s northern and southern region, following an earlier conflict between 1955 and 1972, resulted ultimately in the secession of South Sudan in 2011. In addition, long -standing tensions between Arab and non-Arab communities led to a war in Sudan’s western Darfur region from 2003 onwards.
In April 2019, the Sudanese military deposed Omar al-Bashir, who has led Sudan since seizing power in 1989 and a subsequent power struggle between General al-Burhan and Hemedti led to the outbreak of the current Sudanese current civil war between the SAF and RSF in April 2023.
The UN has described the current civil war in Sudan as a crisis of staggering proportions, with civilians paying the highest price.
We act for many Sudanese asylum seekers and to our dismay and surprise, some of those individuals end up in court, having to defend their position as individuals who cannot return.
One such client is a Sudanese man and his young family who, if returned to Sudan as an ordinary civilian, will be exposed to the risk of harm extending from the ongoing conflict. Despite our persuasive arguments in respect of the application for him to be granted limited leave to remain outside the immigration rules, the Home Office refused his application.
“It is considered to be reasonable to expect you to return to Sudan and continue to enjoy your family life in Sudan. While this may involve a degree of disruption to your private life, this is considered to be proportionate to the legitimate aim of maintaining effective immigration control.”
“In addition, the desire or preference to live in the UK does not amount to an exceptional circumstance.”
In other words, the Home Office found that returning this man and his family to Sudan would not amount to exceptional circumstances. The Home Office speaks about the inability to find employment and accommodation may be an inconvenience, but the degree of inconvenience does not amount to an exceptional circumstance.
After carefully considering the representations against the published guidance on granting leave outside the immigration rules, the Home Office decided that the circumstances of this individual did not consider it to be sufficiently compelling or compassionate for discretion to be exercised.
Needless to say, we appealed and are now waiting to attend court. In the process of this appeal, we instructed a country expert, Dr Hafidi, to prepare a report, so as to demonstrate to the immigration judge, what the current situation in Sudan is and to highlight to the representative of the Home Office their own policies and country guidance.
We will aim to argue that the CPIN (the Country Policy Information Note), which the immigration officer should rely on, regarding security, addresses the level of violence in Sudan, including against its own civilians and reports that there is significant violence recorded in Khartoum. Furthermore, it provides that internal relocation will only be possible depending on the person’s circumstances, not excluding any affiliation with armed groups in opposition and ethnic origin.
In addition to the schedule of country evidence provided by ourselves, the sad reality of Sudan is verified and confirmed by the House of Lords Library in their report the Humanitarian Situation in Sudan, November 2025.
In short, currently in Sudan both government forces and allied militias have repeatedly committed gross human rights violations, often rising to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In April 2023, Sudan was plunged into a new civil war. At this time, an internal power struggle between two factions of the same regime, namely the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. This conflict, now going on for over two years, has been characterised by extreme brutality towards civilians.
According to the Independent UN Fact Finding Mission report to the Human Rights Council, the rival forces in Sudan have been deliberately targeting the civilian population, committing atrocities, including war crimes, on a large scale. The Mission’s findings, released in September 2025 under the title “A War of Atrocities”, make clear that both the SAF and the RSF are responsible for direct, large-scale attacks on civilians, as well as for the destruction of objects essential to civilian survival.
An individual returning to Sudan will be returning to a place where they would be at risk of harm, extending from the ongoing conflicts. The parties have carried out international attacks on civilian infrastructure like hospitals, displacement camps and markets and failed to spare civilians from indiscriminate shelling and air strikes, leading to widespread destruction.
According to the House of Lords briefing, the UN has described the current civil war in Sudan as a crisis of staggering proportions, with civilians paying the highest price. UN agencies have described the conflict as being responsible for the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and the world’s largest displacement crisis.
Multiple sources, including UN agencies and non-governmental organisations, have drawn attention to catastrophic levels of human suffering in western Sudan, including mass atrocities, unlawful killings, sexual violence and extreme malnutrition.
In early November 2025, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), expressed its profound alarm and deepest concern over recent reports emerging from El Fasher about mass killings, rapes and other crimes allegedly committed during the course of the Rapid Support Forces’ attacks. It added:
“These atrocities are part of a broader pattern of violence that has afflicted the entire the Darfur region since April 2023.”
What is the UK Government Policy?
In April 2025, the UK government co-hosted a conference on Sudan with the African Union, the EU, France and Germany in London and international parties announced over £800 million of support to address the humanitarian situation.
In July 2025, Catherine West, then a Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the FCDO, said the UK government condemned the growing body of evidence of serious atrocities being committed against civilians in Sudan, highlighted the ICC’s findings and said the finding marked an important milestone in the ICC’s investigation into crimes committed in the region.
In September 2025, the UK co-chaired a Ministerial meeting on Sudan with the African Union, the EU, Ministers from France and Germany, following the earlier London conference. On 1 November 2025, the government announced a further £5mn in emergency humanitarian support in response to developments in Darfur and at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council on 14 November 2025, Baroness Chapman said:
“Ongoing impunity and reticence from the international community means the conflict in Sudan is now the largest humanitarian crisis of the 21st century.”
It is accepted by the international community and by the UK government that there is an intentional destruction of infrastructure and livelihood across the conflict. The UN Fact-Finding Mission found that both the army and the RSF have been responsible for extensive destruction of essential infrastructure for survival, such as hospitals, markets, water facilities and power stations. They found that food scarcity has become an acute emergency, and that it has affected the availability and accessibility of water, adequate sanitation and hygiene. Disease outbreaks are increasing in the face of disruption to basic public health services, according to the World Health Organisation in March 2025 and Sudan’s education has been devastated through school closures and repurposing of schools as shelters. Alarmingly, the entire situation presents the most precarious position for women, which of course has significantly worsened ever since the start of the war in 2023.
Women and girls are facing escalating risk of gang rape, sexual slavery, trafficking and forced marriages. Experts highlight that in the villages such as Al Seriha, Azrag, Ruffa, women have taken their own lives following traumatic assaults, noting that survivors are increasingly and openly contemplating suicide as a means of escaping the ongoing horrors of the conflict.
Since 2025, at least 330 cases of conflict-related sexual violence have been documented, although the real number is believed to be significantly higher due to underreporting. The brutal nature of the atrocities against women in the midst of the conflict has rung international alarm bells, and in April 2025, UN Women highlighted that the conflict in Sudan has disproportionately shattered the lives of women and girls.
Sexual violence against women is being used as a weapon in the ongoing conflict and UN Women in November 2025 categorically stated that there is mounting evidence that rape is being deliberately and systematically used as a weapon of war. There are no safe spaces left for women and enforced disappearances of women and girls have reportedly surged in the RSF-controlled areas, which many believe to have been abducted for sexual slavery and exploitation. Victims are taken from displacement settings, markets and shelters amid the collapse of protection systems.
And so, when we argued that civilians are regularly targeted by armed forces on both sides of the conflict, the Home Office CPIN supported this submission. In fact, it states that both SAF and RSF have used explosive weapons in civilian areas across Sudan, indiscriminately shelled and in the case of SAF used air strikes on civilian neighbourhoods and against essential infrastructure.
We submitted that medical facilities are targeted and destroyed due to the conflict and indeed the CPIN, referencing the International Rescue Committee, categorically highlights those multiple attacks on healthcare facilities and workers and the occupation of medical facilities by armed forces has resulted in the destruction of medical infrastructure.
We have argued that there is systematic use of rape as a weapon of war and the high risk of sexual violence against women. The CPIN categorically acknowledged such risk and has in several instances concluded that women face this as a result of the conflict in Sudan.
We have argued all of this and yet the applicant’s application was refused, with the need to attend Court. One way to resolve some of the misery of the Sudanese approach is to make sure that the Home Office stops making flawed initial decisions, which are subsequently overturned in Court.