Nora, a Sudanese national and the mother of three, arrived in Cairo in May 2023 only a couple of weeks after the war broke out in Sudan in mid-April 2023. Together with her family, she fled Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, when armed conflict broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The war has now pushed over two million people to cross the border from Sudan into neighbouring countries. According to June 2024 figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), over seven million people have been internally displaced since mid-April 2023, in addition to around 15,000 dead, according to the BBC.

Fleeing her country was not easy for Nora, but it was easier than what many others had to go through. Her family, along with some neighbours, rented a tourist bus that took them all the way to the Egyptian border. Others who were less fortunate rode on the backs of trucks or walked until they could find public buses.

Nora was lucky in having moved early and arrived at the Egyptian border before too many other people. She was also lucky when she arrived in Cairo because her family has an apartment in the city. Her husband took longer to arrive. He had to apply for a visa at the Egyptian Consulate in Port Sudan along with thousands of other Sudanese.

As a young man, he was obliged to get a visa, unlike women and the elderly who were allowed at the time to cross into Egypt without needing one. Since then, the rules have changed, and now everyone is required to have a visa.

Nora was no stranger to Egypt, as her grandmother is Egyptian, and for years she would spend the summer vacation in Cairo. Many Sudanese citizens consider Egypt to be their home. It is estimated that there were around five million Sudanese already residing in Egypt before the conflict. Many of these helped their fleeing relatives when the war broke out. Many Sudanese citizens also have Egyptian roots as a result of mixed marriages.

Once settled in and with no end in sight for the war, Nora made the decision to put her children in school. Though her children’s own school had a branch in Cairo, the tuition was too expensive, and other Sudanese schools did not have the needed certification. She did not want to put her children into the Sudanese schools, but applying to Egyptians schools was not easy either and involved a lot of bureaucratic running around, she said.

With her children at last in school, Nora was able to apply for annual residency in Egypt and legalise her stay at a cost of $25 per individual.

Ahmed, also from Sudan, has children who have been staying at home since they arrived in Cairo. He wants to enrol them in a certified Sudanese school close to his house, but he could not find one in the Manial district where he is currently living.

He hopes that by the time the new school year begins he will have found a school in Nasr City, where he will soon be moving. Ahmed is in Egypt on a tourist residence permit, which he renews every six months for himself, his wife, his four children, and his mother, paying $30 each.

Sudanese citizens have always enjoyed special treatment with the Egyptian authorities, but with the unprecedented numbers of Sudanese and other foreigners fleeing into Egypt over the past decade, Egyptian authorities have placed regulations on their movement. They now demand that all foreign nationals, not just Sudanese, in Egypt must have valid residence papers. Children and the elderly are exempt from fines if they are late in applying. An estimate of nine million foreigners reside in Egypt and are not treated as refugees but as nationals.

REFUGEES: Unlike Nora and Ahmed, who were able to apply for residency directly with the Egyptian authorities, there are thousands of others who have done so by registering with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN refugee agency. By registering as refugees with the UNHCR, Sudanese citizens can get legal residency.

Out of the around 708,000 refugees registered with UNHCR, close to 425,000 are Sudanese, according to Christine Beshay, associate external relations officer at UNHCR Egypt. Anyone seeking international protection and to whom the definition of a refugee applies can register with the UNHCR, she said.

Any person to whom the definition of refugee applies can seek asylum, so automatically anyone fleeing from war is entitled to do so, she explained, adding that registration with the UNHCR also provides international protection. The agency has carried out such registration on behalf of the Egyptian government since 1954.

Once they are registered, refugees have protection in Egypt and cannot be returned to the country they fled from. According to Beshay, they get a card from the UNHCR with which they can legalise their stay in Egypt. They take it and go to the immigration authorities and apply for a six-month renewable residency permit.

The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol are the key legal documents that form the basis of the UNHCR’s work. With 149 State Parties to either or both of these, they define the term “refugee” and outline refugees’ rights and States’ legal obligations to protect them.

The core principle is non-refoulement, which says that refugees should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their lives or freedom. This is considered to be part of customary international law.

Article 1 of the 1951 Convention defines a refugee as someone who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion is outside the country of [their] nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail [themselves] of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of [their] former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”

However, registering with the UNHCR takes time. The family of Ahmed’s wife arrived in Egypt in March, but their appointment with the UNHCR is not before September. However, since they have their appointment with the UNHCR, their legal situation is correct. The Egyptian government had given refugees and foreigners in general the deadline of 1 July, later extended to 30 September, to legalise their presence in Egypt and to apply for residency.

According to Naila Gabr, chair of the National Committee for Combating Illegal Migration and Human Trafficking, “the new registration measures should not be seen as an aggressive move against foreign nationals. It is the right of the Egyptian government to regulate the status of foreigners residing here in line with Egyptian laws and international conventions.”

The delay in getting a UNHCR appointment is caused by the unprecedented influx of refugees into Egypt. There has been a six to seven-fold increase in the number of Sudanese registered with it over the past 14 months, Beshay said. She added that the agency has been trying to improve the rate at which they register refugees by expanding the capacity of the registration centres, but their funding has not increased at the same rate as the increase in the number of refugees.

“Our funding is relatively limited compared to our needs, so we have to prioritise. Some programmes had to be downsized at the expense of others,” she said.

Nowadays, the priority is for registration, which is the first line of defence for refugees. As a result, the UNHCR has invested in registration activities and expanded its premises and registration centres in Cairo and Alexandria to meet the growing needs of people arriving from Sudan.

Other services offered to refugees by the UNHCR and its partners include protection services such as legal aid for personal-status issues, for example, or administrative issues such as expired permits and other non-criminal offences.

They also offer child-protection support for unaccompanied children or those separated from their legal guardian. They provide psychosocial support, mental health support, and healthcare. By having refugee cards and legalising their status, refugees can access the healthcare services that are available to Egyptian nationals for free. In instances where a patient may require surgery, the implementing partner is approached to step in.

Accordingly, surgery is prioritised based on the available funding and the severity of the case concerned. “We start by handling the most urgent cases, and the less urgent are placed on a waiting list until we have run through the priority cases first,” Beshay said.

The UNHCR provides employment support, skills training, capacity building, and education grants. It is also working closely with the Ministry of Education to establish smart classrooms. In collaboration with the Vodafone Foundation, it is sponsoring a project called Instant Network Schools that provides electronic pads and connectivity at schools.

“We target schools with the largest number of refugees, but Egyptians at those schools also benefit from the services,” Beshay said.

While registering with the UNHCR is the solution for anyone without proper identification, it is also accessible to others and enables refugees to obtain residence permits for around LE150 per individual, unlike the $30 paid by Ahmed for his tourist visa.

However, for Ahmed it is a solution that he would only resort to if he felt he was going to be denied residency. Otherwise, he said that having refugee status could tie him down because it would not enable him to travel easily if he found employment in a third country.

SUPPORT: Many Sudanese are seeking jobs abroad because they are not able to find them locally.     

Ahmed tried to open a bakery, but was not successful.

Other Sudanese nationals selling Sudanese food and goods to Sudanese clientele have been faring better, often because they are not competing with Egyptian locals, Mohamed, 39, noted. However, many have still had to close down for not complying with Egyptian regulations to legalise their status. Mohamed is applying for a job in Saudi Arabia, where he needs to pay significant sums for papers.

The UNHCR offers some financial aid for the most vulnerable individuals. This is done after a vulnerability assessment, but not everyone is covered. “Unfortunately, we have to prioritise among the most vulnerable,” Beshay said.

Today, the UNHCR is the lead agency coordinating the Sudan emergency response among the different UN agencies. Coordination mechanisms have been created to ensure that various stakeholders can provide services across different fields and to make sure that as many services as possible are covered with the limited resources available, Beshay explained.

“Overall, the funding for Sudan is unfortunately not as generous as it should have been,” she said. At the beginning of each year the UNHCR appeals for funding, and it factors in the emergency in Sudan as well as the general situation. “This year, we appealed for $134 million. But by 10 July we had only received 44 per cent of the budget we asked for,” she added.

“The funding situation of UNHCR Egypt is challenging, affecting our ability to deliver and meet the most pressing needs of refugees and asylum-seekers,” Beshay said. She added that after the emergencies in Gaza and previously in Syria and Ukraine there is now donor fatigue.

Beshay said that the UNHCR in Egypt is about to launch a refugee response plan together with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and in collaboration with the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.

“Through this appeal, we will be requesting $313.5 million for 28 partners working to support and respond to the needs of refugees and host community members in Egypt,” she said. The money will support refugees, asylum-seekers, third country nationals (people who have escaped from Sudan but are not Sudanese) and host community members who are Egyptians.

Another challenge facing refugees is education. Higher education is often inaccessible for reasons of cost to many of the refugees. Many students dropped out of their courses because of the war in Sudan, and they have been struggling to complete their education in Egypt, Beshay said.

UNHCR has been addressing the relevant ministries to try to find a solution to validating certificates and lowering fees.

The influx of Sudanese citizens to Egypt has increased demand for goods and services causing a hike in prices. Some rent rates have doubled with some hitting record highs even in areas that would not necessarily qualify as attractive destinations. On Faisal Street in west Cairo, a lower middle-class neighbourhood, a furnished apartment can rent for as much as LE15,000, for example.

For many Egyptians that is a whopping sum, but “for many Sudanese that is still cheaper than living in Sudan because prices shot up during the war,” Mohamed said. Many Sudanese also have children working abroad who send them money.

Some say it is greed that is causing the hike in rents. “If rents are high, it is because everyone wants a piece of the cake. It is not the refugees’ fault,” said one source who preferred to remain anonymous.

Others, however, attribute the rises to supply and demand, especially with the cost of many things in Egypt more than doubling over the past two years. Egypt’s urban headline inflation registered 27.5 per cent in June 2024. Though high, this was an improvement on the 38 per cent recorded in September 2023.

Another challenge facing the refugees, according to the anonymous source, is finding jobs. He said that though Egypt is obliged to allow refugees to work, getting work permits is still not easy. Those who have found jobs have often done so informally, he pointed out. Ahmed, an architect, has not tried looking for a job.

“Many Egyptians can’t find jobs. How can I as a foreigner find one,” he asked.

Hamdi, who owned an eyewear shop back in Sudan, is thinking of returning to his country. He plans to stay with relatives in one of the safer governorates. “Going back is better than feeling unwanted and not being able to work and earn a living,” Hamdi said.

Others want to migrate to other countries and are hoping the UNHCR can help with that. But, according to Beshay, only one per cent of refugees globally have this opportunity. There is a quota for every country, but on average it does not exceed one per cent of registered cases, she said.

“We have complementary pathways, as there is only a handful of scholarships for education, for example,” she said. Through such pathways, refugees can pursue work or study opportunities, reunite with family, and apply for other visas just like any other migrant. They also address a refugee’s specific need for protection against refoulement by including specific safeguards.

Among those trying to help Sudanese refugee find resettlement is Fawaz Ateem, chair of the Malak Foundation, an Australian NGO, who is trying to help out by lobbying decision-makers around the world proposing solutions.

The foundation is also lobbying the Australian government and civil society to open pathways for Sudanese refugees who have family in Australia. It is encouraging Sudanese citizens to apply for study visas and skilled workers visas. And it has proposed a project to establish a community sponsorship programme aiming to facilitate the entry of skilled Sudanese individuals into Australia.

The programme aims to address skill shortages in the region while providing opportunities for professional development and employment for individuals impacted by the war in Sudan. Another programme aims to provide targeted support and foster innovation among Africans who have obtained higher education degrees and have innovative research ideas.

But while these efforts are important, the real solution is for the war in Sudan to end, said Ateem. Many of the refugees do not have the means financially to continue living in Egypt and do not have the chance of resettlement in a third country either and are thus compelled to return to their homeland.

“But they will not be able to go back if the war rages on,” he stressed. Moreover, there are others who have sold everything back home to be able to build a life in Egypt. These too will not be able to go back, especially with the damage suffered by the infrastructure in their own country.

Besides the hope of resettlement, some Sudanese such as Nora are looking into their Egyptian roots and want to apply for Egyptian citizenship. While this will require a lot of paperwork to prove her family tree, she intends to pursue it.

“It is the only way to find stability,” she said.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 8 August, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly