A woman and her baby daughter wait with hundreds of South Sudanese refugee returnees at Palouch airport in Upper Nile State, South Sudan, to board one of the cargo planes transporting people to different parts of the country. (UNHCR)

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) announced Tuesday that it is expanding its Sudan aid plan to include Libya and Uganda, as arrivals surge.

Sudan currently faces the world's worst displacement crisis, with approximately 12 million people forced to flee due to civil war and over 2 million displaced across borders. This latest expansion increases the total number of African countries receiving large numbers of Sudanese refugees to seven.

The arrival of refugees in Libya raises concerns that they may continue their journey to Europe, a scenario UNHCR's chief has warned about if sufficient aid is not provided.

A UNHCR planning document published on Tuesday projected that Libya could receive 149,000 Sudanese refugees by the end of the year, while Uganda, which does not share a direct border with Sudan, is expected to take in 55,000.

"It just speaks to the desperate situation and desperate decisions that people are making, that they end up in a place like Libya which is, of course, extremely difficult for refugees right now," said UNHCR's Ewan Watson in Geneva.

Thousands of refugees in Libya, Egypt

Since last year, at least 20,000 Sudanese refugees arrived in Libya, with numbers accelerating in recent months and many thousands more remaining unregistered. Watson added that at least 39,000 Sudanese refugees had arrived in Uganda since the war began.

It's worth mentioning that last year, according to a study released on June 19 by Amnesty International, Egypt conducted widespread arrests and arbitrary deportations of thousands of migrants fleeing Sudan's war.

Between January and March of this year, the rights organization identified 12 occasions in which Egyptian officials repatriated an estimated 800 Sudanese people without providing them the opportunity to claim asylum or dispute deportation decisions.

It further stated that it has thoroughly recorded the cases of 27 Sudanese refugees apprehended between October 2023 and March 2024, 26 of whom were collectively removed. Refugees have been confined in brutal and inhumane conditions before their deportation, it noted.