The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says more than 11,000 people have gone missing in Sudan since the conflict began three years ago, as families continue searching for relatives amid ongoing fighting.

The number of missing persons cases recorded by the ICRC has surged by over 40% in the past year alone, the organisation said in a humanitarian report released on April 14, 2026. These figures add to the staggering human toll of a conflict that has displaced 14 million people. Of those, nine million have sought safety elsewhere inside Sudan, while 4.4 million have fled to neighbouring countries, including Chad, Egypt and South Sudan, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Mohammed Jaafar operates a motorcycle taxi in Port Sudan, a city that has at times served as the country's de facto capital during the civil war. He says his son was captured by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) more than a year ago, with no further information since.

"We lost all contact with him. The memory of my son haunts me every day. I've been living alone here for over a year now," said Jaafar.

His tribulations mirror a widespread crisis in the country designated by the United Nations as the world' s largest humanitarian and displacement crisis. The ICRC attributes the breakdown in contact between families and their loved ones to a worrying destruction of communication networks. These families now endure deep and lasting psychological suffering, not knowing the fate of their kin.

Yet, there have been some successes. In 2025, the ICRC and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement facilitated more than 560,000 phone calls within Sudan, as well as from Egypt, South Sudan and Chad.

The conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF broke out on April 15, 2023.

Now in its fourth year, the UN leads a list of international agencies in calls for an immediate ceasefire, unrestricted humanitarian access, and safe passage for people wanting to flee their homes.

The ICRC recently released a humanitarian report urging the safeguarding of critical infrastructure that enables essential services and the reuniting of families separated by the war.

The agency says it is running a hotline and regional tracing efforts, but the fate of thousands of people remains unknown.