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The UK government has positioned itself as a leading international humanitarian actor on the war in Sudan, but refugees and campaign groups in Britain say its treatment of Sudanese seeking asylum in the country paints a very different picture.
A former colonial power in Sudan, the UK plays a prominent diplomatic role on the conflict as a penholder on the UN Security Council. Senior parliamentarians have, meanwhile, used the crisis to bolster their humanitarian images.
Yet hardline immigration and asylum policies back home have hindered Sudanese wanting to come to the UK and forced thousands into taking dangerous journeys into the country, whether in lorries or across the English Channel on boats.
“I left my home to escape war and killings, to feel safe and secure, but I had the opposite,” said Said Ibrahim, who left Sudan before the war. “I had to risk my life on a dangerous journey and then felt unwelcome and a burden when I arrived in the UK.”
Sudan's more than three-year war – fought mainly between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary-turned-rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – has produced the world's largest humanitarian crisis, driving famine and displacing over 11 million people.
This year, the UK has pledged £146 million (nearly $200 million) in humanitarian aid for Sudan, and has sought to galvanise international action by co-hosting high-level conferences, and by launching a coalition for atrocity prevention.
At the same time, however, the UK has not created any dedicated resettlement route for Sudanese, while policy changes have narrowed or halted options for those trying to reunite with family members already in the country.
Maddy Crowther, co-executive director at Waging Peace, a UK charity that supports Sudanese refugees, said the government’s approach shows inconsistency across departments.
“On the one hand, the UK is rightly committed to preventing further atrocities in Sudan… but the very survivors of such devastating atrocities can be demonised as ‘small boat’ arrivals, and subject to confusing Home Office policy and practice.” Crowther said.
Others say the UK’s approach to Sudanese refugees reflects a wider paradox in its Sudan policy. While supporting efforts to end the conflict, it maintains strong diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates, the main external actor fuelling the war.
The Gulf state is the primary backer of the RSF – accused by UN investigators of genocide – yet at no point has the UK publicly condemned its security ally and largest trade partner in the Middle East.
Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said the UK’s relationship with the UAE is an “elephant in the room”, reflecting its “unwillingness to pay the political cost needed to really change the dynamics of the conflict”.
Resettlement restrictions
The UK is home to several generations of Sudanese. Between the start of 2023, the year the war began, and March of this year, it received just short of 15,000 asylum claims from Sudanese nationals.
This number represents only a tiny fraction of the more than 4.5 million Sudanese who have escaped their country since 2023. The vast majority have settled in neighbouring states, as is typical of major refugee crises.
Due to the absence of safe and legal asylum pathways into the UK, most of the 15,000 arrived without government permission, after making dangerous journeys through Africa and Europe.
The UK does operate general resettlement schemes, allowing vulnerable refugees identified by the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, to be brought into the country. But these schemes admit only a small number of refugees each year, including around 150 Sudanese since 2023.
Country-specific resettlement schemes can be set up if the government chooses. Soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, it approved over 200,000 visas for Ukrainians, including through a scheme for refugees to live in British households.
“The schemes for Ukraine and other countries show what the government can do when it has the political will to offer sanctuary.”
Yet no equivalent scheme has been created for Sudanese refugees, despite the UK’s historical involvement in Sudan and the enduring negative consequences of its colonial rule.
“When people fled Ukraine, communities across the UK opened their doors with extraordinary compassion,” said Sile Reynolds, head of asylum advocacy at Freedom from Torture, a UK non-profit that supports people who have survived torture.
“That same humanity can and must extend to anyone escaping torture and war,” she added. “The schemes for Ukraine and other countries show what the government can do when it has the political will to offer sanctuary.”
Family reunion suspended
Though resettlement options are limited, Sudanese with close family members in the UK who have been recognised as refugees have been able to apply to one of the few available humanitarian pathways: refugee family reunion.
But this route – which provided visas for thousands of Sudanese over the last three years – was suspended last September. A campaign group and others brought a legal challenge against the decision, but it was dismissed by the High Court.
The suspension affected the family of 34-year-old Batim, who fled an area near Khartoum and reached the UK with two of her children after a long and difficult journey. She said she left behind a third child, aged two, who was too young to travel, believing they could later reunite.
Hanan Ashegh, founder and executive director of Goodwill Caravan, a UK humanitarian organisation, said the suspension has left many families with no realistic way to be together.
She recalled one Sudanese mother who had sent her teenage son to Cyprus for safety, believing she would later be able to bring him to the UK. After the scheme was suspended, “she had no hope,” Ashegh said.
“They’ve told us that they don't feel like they're able to work, integrate into their communities, start to envision any sort of future until they know that their family is safe and here with them.”
Refugee lawyers were “inundated with cases like this”, Ashegh added. She said some recognised refugees have chosen to leave the UK altogether so they can reunite with their families elsewhere.
Darren Murton from the British Red Cross said the charity had also received a large number of enquiries from recognised refugees, including Sudanese and others, in the UK who have been affected by the suspension.
“They’ve told us that they don't feel like they're able to work, integrate into their communities, start to envision any sort of future until they know that their family is safe and here with them,” Morton said.
Even before family reunion was suspended, campaigners criticised the route for being limited to the spouses and children under 18 of existing refugees, with exceptions considered only in compelling circumstances.
“Many of the families we work with come from cultures where grandparents, parents and children live as one family unit,” said Caterina Franchi, the acting head of the UK legal team at Safe Passage International. “The immigration system often doesn't reflect those realities.”
Franchi said she had seen many painful separations involving Sudanese families, including one in which an elderly grandmother was left behind in Egypt. Now in her eighties and in poor health, she lives alone without access to public healthcare.
Even for eligible Sudanese, applying for reunion had been complicated by the closure of the approved application centre in Sudan during the conflict, forcing applicants to travel elsewhere to provide biometrics.
Although the UK Home Office can technically waive biometric requirements, it has only done so in a small number of cases, leaving many applicants trapped in lengthy and difficult bureaucratic processes.
A Sudanese teacher and activist, who asked for their name not to be used, said it took their spouse and children two years to join them in the UK after the outbreak of war.
The teacher said the family completed a long online application process – with support from Migrants Organise, a UK charity that supports refugees and migrants – before travelling to Ethiopia to provide biometric data.
“They sometimes went days without enough food and had nowhere permanent to live,” they said. “We were constantly asking ourselves: Should they stay in Addis (Ethiopia’s capital) without shelter or food or return to Sudan, where it was unsafe and our family home had been destroyed and looted?”
The teacher said that the cost of flights between Sudan and Ethiopia, and to the UK, along with accommodation and other expenses came to around £17,000 (nearly $23,000). They said the money was borrowed from family and friends, and that debts are outstanding.
Steep visas and student bans
There are other lawful immigration routes to enter the UK for Sudanese and others, including family, student, and work visas. But these are all subject to strict eligibility requirements that many fleeing conflict struggle to meet.
Family visa rules, for example, allow foreign nationals to join a spouse or partner already in the UK, or children under 18 to join a parent. But to qualify, the UK sponsor must meet a yearly income threshold that rose in 2024 from £18,600 to £29,000 (around $25,000 to nearly $40,000).
Reem, a Sudanese doctor in Newcastle, said she applied for a spouse visa rather than pursuing refugee reunion for her husband, Nagi, the chief executive of a gold mining company, because she could support him on her salary.
But the route has proved costly. The couple said they have spent around £8,000 (nearly $11,000) on visa application and extension fees, a health surcharge, English language tests, and other associated costs, with fees rising sharply in recent years.
To cover his share of the costs while also supporting family members, Nagi works long hours in low-paid, insecure jobs, delivering parcels during the day and doing security guard work in the evenings.
Meanwhile, Sudanese hoping to come to the UK as students are facing restrictions after the Home Office suspended student visas for Sudanese nationals and three other countries earlier this year.
The government said the measure was introduced because people were applying for asylum after arriving in the UK on student visas. Universities disputed the data used to justify the ban.
The decision affected Manar Abdelwahab from Gedaref, in eastern Sudan. After years of effort, she said she secured a scholarship and offers from leading UK institutions to study a masters in sexual and reproductive health.
“I had invested so much time in this and I could only find this specific course in the UK,” Abdelwahab told The New Humanitarian. “I am devastated.”
“Education was one way the UK government could support Sudan during this crisis. However, once again, they are chasing headlines that make them seem tough on immigration.”
Seamus Logan, a Scottish politician and member of parliament, who has been outspoken on Sudan and who has relatives who are Sudanese nationals, strongly criticised the ban.
“Education was one way the UK government could support Sudan during this crisis,” he said. “However, once again, they are chasing headlines that make them seem tough on immigration.”
Peter Verney, a Sudan specialist from the UK, described the government’s approach to refugees as “performative cruelty”. “The Home Office is trying to make life as miserable as possible for Sudanese, and for all refugees here,” he said.
Dangerous crossings
Rather than deterring migration, refugee campaigners said the UK’s increasingly restrictive policies risk driving Sudanese and other refugee groups towards making dangerous unofficial crossings.
Unable to secure permission to enter the UK, Batim said her family decided to travel irregularly. Along the way, their boat sank three separate times in the Mediterranean, leaving her children traumatised by water to this day.
A refugee from El Fasher, one of the worst affected cities in the conflict, said they travelled to the UK via Libya, where they were detained by gangs and told to pay $2,000. “I could never have imagined how bad it would be,” they said, requesting anonymity.
Ibrahim, the refugee who left Sudan just before the war, said he also risked his life getting into the UK in a lorry that was crossing the English Channel, having spent time in Libya, where he said he was detained and beaten by smuggling gangs.
“I have regular nightmares about my time in Libya,” he said. “I wake up clutching my hands, thinking I'm still hiding from the Libyans. I recently heard that some of the people I knew who are still there are losing their minds.”
Rather than prompting humanitarian concern, Channel crossings have become a political flashpoint in the UK. Politicians frequently vilify those arriving on boats and pledge to “smash” people-smuggling gangs instead of expanding safe routes.
Refugees are, meanwhile, frequently portrayed in the media as abusing the UK’s generosity, when in reality they have to endure “a long and retraumatising wait for a decision on their claim” said Reynolds, of Freedom from Torture.
Ibrahim said he spent more than a year-and-a-half in asylum accommodation and, after being granted refugee status in January 2024, was homeless for several months, sleeping in a park in freezing temperatures.
The refugee from El Fasher said that after he claimed asylum, he also spent almost a year-and-a-half in asylum housing, surviving on £9 ($12) a week while unable to work as per Home Office rules.
More uncertainty
Further changes announced last year by the Labour government, amid the rise of the far-right Reform UK party, are set to make life even more difficult for refugees, including those from Sudan.
Previously, most people granted refugee status in the UK received five years permission to stay. After that period, they could apply for permanent settlement.
Under the new system, however, refugee status has become temporary and subject to review every 30 months, while the route to permanent settlement could take decades.
The government has also proposed a contribution-based system, allowing refugees to knock years off their waiting period if they can meet various government-defined criteria on employment and integration.
A Sudanese human rights advocate who sought asylum in the UK in 2023 said the new system has left them feeling “very uncertain”, especially the need to constantly prove their worth.
“Safety is not just escaping from the bullets and the bombs, it is having some kind of certainty,” they told The New Humanitarian. “I don’t feel that in the UK, especially with the recent changes.”
Edited by Philip Kleinfeld.
