About two months after heavy clashes around his home in Sudan’s capital drove Sherif Abdelmoneim to flee, soaring rent and food costs forced the 36-year-old and his family of six to return to a city where fighting still rages.
Most of those who fled Khartoum after the war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
1 million have stayed in Sudan, where they have come under increasing financial pressure.
“The states (outside Khartoum) are safe but the prices are expensive and rents are high, and we cannot continue with that,” Abdelmoneim said.
He spoke by phone from Omdurman, a city adjoining Khartoum where he has rented a house in an area where he can still hear artillery fire but is no longer in the midst of clashes.
The conflict has brought Sudan’s stagnant economy to its knees, blocking much trade and transport, as well as halting many salary payments, and causing vast damage to infrastructure.
The country now has to draw on what meagre resources are left to support an internally displaced population which, when those made homeless by previous conflict are included, reaches nearly 7.1 million, more than any other in the world.
