Last week, 42 migrants were presumed to have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea after their dinghy set sail off the Libyan coast.At least 29 of them were Sudanese refugees who fled the catastrophic civil war in their country between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the regular army known as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listSince erupting in April 2023, the Sudan war has caused the largest displacement crisis in the world.Nearly 13 million people have been uprooted from their homes and more than four million have fled to neighbouring countries, such as Chad, Egypt and Libya.According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 86,000 Sudanese nationals are registered as asylum seekers or refugees in Libya – a 60,000 uptick compared with before the war.As more Sudanese attempt to reach Europe from Libya, this is everything you need to know about their plight.How many Sudanese asylum seekers have reached Europe since the war started?From April 2023 to January 2024, the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) registered nearly 10,000 asylum applications from Sudanese nationals across the European Union – nearly twice as high as the previous year.While figures for 2025 have not yet been published, the growing number of Sudanese nationals arriving in Libya suggests that more people are aiming to reach Europe as their final destination.“I hope to soon take the journey across the sea to Europe,” Hamid, a Sudanese refugee from Khartoum, told Al Jazeera from Libya, where he arrived earlier this ye …
