In July 2025, Egypt launched a “return train” initiative, carrying Sudanese refugees from Cairo to Aswan by rail, where buses would take them onward to Khartoum. By December 2025, the service had transported 42,944 Sudanese passengers in a journey that is described as “voluntary return”. But what does it mean when refugees decide that returning to a country still being ravaged by war and violence is safer than staying in asylum?
Since the war erupted in Sudan in April 2023, Egypt emerged as the primary host country for Sudanese refugees, estimated at 1.5 million. Given its relatively permissive entry policies, which exempted broad categories from visa requirements, over 250,000 people crossed the border in the first months of the war. However, this initial openness soon gave way to tighter restrictions. By June 2023, Egypt had introduced visa requirements for all Sudanese nationals entering the country. In December 2024, it further adopted its first-ever asylum law, marking a significant shift in the country’s approach to refugee protection.
While the return train initiative is officially presented as a means of facilitating voluntary repatriation, the circumstances in which refugees decide to return to a war-torn Sudan warrant closer scrutiny. For those facing uncertainty over their legal status, difficulty securing livelihoods, and fears about their safety in Egypt, returning to Sudan may seem like the only viable option, despite the dangers that persist there.
The Legal Vacuum
To regularize their stay, refugees must first register with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and obtain the necessary documentation before applying for a residence permit from the Egyptian authorities. In practice, accessing both stages of this process has become increasingly difficult.
Growing demand for UNHCR registration since the war erupted in Sudan has left applicants waiting months, sometimes years, for appointments, with some individuals who sought registration in 2024 and 2025 receiving dates as far ahead as 2026. These delays have been compounded by funding cuts that forced UNHCR Egypt to close two of its three registration centers in 2025, concentrating services in Cairo’s 6th of October office. Since many Sudanese refugees enter Egypt through its southern border, travelling to Cairo to access registration services imposes additional financial and logistical burdens on those seeking to regularize their status.
Even when registered by the UNHCR, obtaining the residence permit was described as practically impossible, at least not in a timely manner. In early 2024, applicants were reportedly given appointments approximately 273 days later. By March 2025, some appointments had been scheduled as far ahead as October 2027, while renewal appointments were reportedly being issued for 2028. In some cases, these waiting periods extended beyond the validity of refugees’ UNHCR documentation, leaving them without a clear or secure legal status despite having taken the necessary steps to regularize their stay.
This situation was described by the Refugee Platform in Egypt as “forced undocumentation”. In effect, a system intended to document and regulate refugees can leave them trapped in legal uncertainty, increasing their vulnerability to exploitation, and creating further obstacles to accessing essential services.
The Threat of Arrests and Deportations
Because Egyptian security authorities primarily recognize a valid residence permit as proof of lawful status, refugees have faced arrest even when registered with UNHCR, waiting for a residence-permit appointment or seeking to renew an expired permit.
Since mid-2024, security forces began conducting mass arrests, detentions and deportations. These operations reportedly involved targeting people on the basis of skin color on the pretext of verifying their immigration documents. Arrests extended to the residential neighborhoods where refugees live, by raiding homes and neighborhoods known to have large refugee populations. Reportedly, 42 per cent of those arrested in the documented cases had valid UNHCR documentation, while 12 per cent held proof of an upcoming registration appointment. In some cases, refugees were arrested from public hospitals while receiving treatment for injuries sustained during their journeys from Sudan to Egypt. Some were transferred to detention against medical advice, before completing their treatment.
The risk of arrest begins at Egypt’s southern border. Security forces have reportedly intercepted people fleeing the war, detained them in makeshift facilities and military-controlled sites under inhumane conditions, before returning them to Sudan without providing a meaningful opportunity to seek asylum. For those who manage to enter Egypt, the journey to Cairo to regularize their stay presents another point of vulnerability. Security checkpoints along the route from Aswan have reportedly involved identity checks of passengers at train stations and on buses. More than half of the documented cases involved people travelling for UNHCR registration appointments.
Impact on Livelihoods and Education
The consequences extend to refugees’ access to employment, education, and healthcare. Fear of being stopped by security forces, detained or having their UNHCR documents confiscated has forced many families to restrict their movements, limiting their ability to work, attend school, and carry out everyday activities. Restrictions on refugees’ access to formal labor markets often push them into informal employment, where they lack adequate legal protection and face a heightened risk of exploitation and abuse. Working conditions can be precarious, characterized by low wages, long working hours, and inadequate workplace safety.
Children face additional barriers to education. Enrolling in Egyptian schools requires proof of legal residency and recognized certificates from previous schools. Both can be difficult to obtain. Residence permits are subject to lengthy administrative delays, while many families fled Sudan without the documents needed to complete school enrolment. Even when children meet these requirements, school fees and related expenses may remain beyond their families’ means. This is particularly consequential for children who have experienced war and displacement, for whom education can provide not only continuity in learning but also stability, social connection and psychological support.
Access to healthcare is also affected. According to the 2025 Egypt Vulnerability Assessment of Refugees, 34 per cent of newly arrived Sudanese refugee households had not sought medical care despite needing it. Reports of refugees being turned away from public hospitals or arrested while receiving treatment further reinforce these fears, making access to healthcare another source of insecurity rather than a reliable form of protection.
How Voluntary is Return?
The absence of physical coercion is not enough to describe return as “voluntary”. For repatriation to be genuinely voluntary, refugees must be able to make a free and informed decision, without being placed in circumstances that leave them with no realistic alternative. As the conditions described above demonstrate, that choice is becoming increasingly constrained in Egypt. For some, returning to a country still ravaged by war may seem less uncertain than remaining in the country where they sought refuge. This does not mean that every return is involuntary, but it raises serious questions about how freely such decisions can be made when the alternative is marked by insecurity.
Egypt has a longstanding history of hosting refugees and asylum seekers, and the pressures created by the arrival of large numbers of Sudanese refugees since the outbreak of war are real. However, these pressures cannot justify the erosion of refugees’ rights or the normalization of arrest and deportation. Under the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, Egypt is bound by the principle of “non-refoulement“, which prohibits returning refugees to places where they may face persecution or serious threats to their lives or freedom. Facilitating return cannot substitute for this responsibility. Ultimately, the success of a return initiative should not be measured solely by the number of people transported home, but also by whether those who remain in Egypt can live safely, with dignity, and with a genuine possibility of rebuilding their lives.
Image: “The human cost of war: lives of Sudan’s refugees in Egypt” by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
