At the edge of war: the Central African Republic's uneasy border with Sudan

Since the beginning of the civil war in Sudan, tens of thousands of refugees have fled south to the area, carrying with them not only what they could salvage from their homes, but the woes of the world's largest humanitarian crisis.

On a sweltering November day, at the start of the dry season, a tall woman was standing in the shade of a tree near a plastic tent, amid the thatched-roof houses of Korsi, a neighborhood hastily built on the outskirts of Birao to absorb the tide of new arrivals.

Nafeesa, as we'll call her, said she came from a city outside Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, more than 700 miles away.

When the war broke out there, in April 2023, she and her family headed west to South Darfur, where her husband opened a small shop in a local market. One day, armed men burst into the store and threatened him. He managed to escape, but they followed him home.

That same night, the men returned to finish the job.

"They came to us at 1:30am," Nafeesa, whose real name has been changed to protect her safety, recalled in Arabic. "He got out of bed, but they shot him three times."

She and her nine-year-old son were tied up as her husband lay dying. "They took our money, our belongings, and our clothes."

She spoke in a soft voice, her hands covered with dainty henna patterns, but her face was hardened by grief and exile.

After the killing, she decided to leave Sudan with the rest of her family.

The war spreads

The events that forever altered the course of Nafeesa's life were put into motion by the rupture between Sudan's army chief, general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

Nearly three years later, what started as a power struggle in Khartoum metastasized into nationwide bloodshed. Roughly 30 million people have been pushed into humanitarian distress and more than 10 million have fled their homes, half of them children. Since the summer of 2024, famine has taken hold in various parts of the country.

In late October 2025, the war reached a new threshold. After more than 500 days of siege, the RSF seized the city of El Fasher, the last government stronghold in North Darfur. Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Reports emerged of ethnically targeted massacres against non-Arab communities, mass rape, and summary executions.

For many Darfuris, the violence felt chillingly familiar. The RSF trace their origins to the Janjaweed militias that fought alongside the Sudanese government during the Darfur war, more than two decades ago.

That conflict pitted them against the region's non-Arab communities - the Fur, the Masalit, and the Zaghawa. Just weeks before the fall of El Fasher, the International Criminal Court (ICC) convicted Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al Rahman - a former Janjaweed leader known as Ali Kushay - of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in West Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Prosecutors warned that similar atrocities were again being committed today, often with rape used as a weapon of war.

Borders without barriers

Like Nafeesa, many people living in Darfur cross south into the Central African Republic, where they arrive in Am Dafock, a border town sitting on marshy ground two hours away from Birao.

They came to us at 1:30am.... He got out of bed, but they shot him three times.

There is no fence, no physical barrier marking the end of one country and the beginning of the other - just a dried-up riverbed spanning the invisible line drawn on maps.

People move back and forth freely - by foot, riding donkeys, or with cattle. Armed men cross, too.

In the words of Ramadan Abdel Kader, the area's deputy governor, the town's recent history has been defined by fear. "The population was plunged into absolute distress," he told us. Men suspected to be RSF fighters crossed the border to loot, kill, and terrorize villagers.

At the height of the violence, he said, up to 11,500 people - a large chunk of the Am Dafock population - fled their homes.

They found shelter near the local base of MINUSCA, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR), which set up camp in the border town after the Sudanese crisis erupted. "Were it not for its presence here, this locality would have been overrun by armed elements from Sudan," the official said.

Born of another war

The reason for MINUSCA's presence in the country has scarcely anything to do with its embattled neighbor. The mission was deployed in 2014 as the Central African Republic descended into chaos, following the seizure of power by the Séléka, a predominantly Muslim coalition that overthrew the president at the time, François Bozizé. What followed was a spiral of violence in which Séléka fighters and mostly Christian militias known as the anti-Balaka committed widespread abuses against civilians - killings, looting, sexual violence - plunging the country into cycles of communal bloodshed.

The violence pushed the country to the brink of collapse. Entire communities were displaced along religious lines. State authority evaporated outside the capital, Bangui.

More than a decade later, the Séléka has disbanded, two presidential elections have been held, and a 2019 peace agreement brought 14 armed groups into a political process. Still, large swaths of the country remain unstable, and the UN mission maintains more than 13,000 troops across the landlocked nation.

We are operating in an environment where the state is still rebuilding itself

In the north, where seasonal flooding regularly cuts the region off from the rest of the country, MINUSCA forces patrol vast distances with limited infrastructure. "We are operating in an environment where the State is still rebuilding itself," said Major Obed Mumba, the commander of the roughly 200 peacekeepers stationed in Am Dafock. "Our role here is first and foremost to protect civilians and to prevent any escalation that could destabilize the region further."

With the Sudanese war raging at its doorstep, the mission has taken on a renewed sense of urgency. For Major Sifamwelwa Akalaluka, who leads MINUSCA's community engagement efforts in Birao, its work is inseparable from the human terrain. "We engage with the population every day," she said. "We listen to women, to youth, to community leaders. This helps us understand where tensions are rising before they turn into violence."

When land becomes contested

Those tensions, local officials and residents told us, were not driven solely by the presence of armed men crossing over from Sudan. They were also fuelled by competition over land and resources between Sudanese pastoralists, fleeing violence with their herds, and Central African farmers, whose fields lie along transhumance routes - traditional paths used to move livestock in search of pasture.

As Sudanese breeders have moved south with their cattle, crops were trampled, wells were strained, and disputes multiplied.

What had once been seasonal friction hardened into confrontation, exacerbated by rumors, opportunistic traders, and the circulation of weapons in an already volatile border zone. Suspected RSF fighters and other armed elements exploited the chaos.

By September, according to Tamia Célestin, one of Am Dafock's community leaders, the situation had reached a breaking point. "We recorded numerous cases of rape," he said. "Young girls, some of them 12 or 13 years old, were attacked. People were afraid to go to their fields." That month, local leaders registered six bodies shot dead and nearly 26 cases of sexual violence.

Talking under the trees

In response, MINUSCA facilitated a cross-border dialogue, bringing together Central African and Sudanese communities who had been living face to face - and increasingly at odds. From October 27 to 30, 2025, more than a hundred delegates gathered in Am Dafock, sitting on benches and mats beneath trees, in the absence of any formal meeting hall.

Religious leaders, village chiefs, traders, members of transhumance committees, and nine women faced one another across the dusty clearing. "The dialogue was not easy," Mr. Célestin, who took part in the three-day talks, recalled. "But people spoke." Grievances were aired. Accusations exchanged. Boundaries redrawn - not on maps, but in words. "In the end, we agreed that the violence had to stop," he said

A local agreement was signed just two weeks before our arrival. It banned the carrying of weapons, reaffirmed transhumance corridors for cattle, and committed both sides to resolving disputes through local committees rather than force. Since then, residents said, the gunfire had mostly quieted. The fields were being cultivated again. The border remained open - but calmer.

Am Dafock was buzzing with preparations for the upcoming general elections, as residents were preparing to choose an official mayor for the first time in decades - municipal polls had not been held in the country since 1988.

On December 28, Central Africans voted overwhelmingly for the incumbent president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, securing him a third term.

For many residents there, the ballot carried the promise of normalcy, or at least continuity, in a region long starved of both.

That promise, however, remains elusive.

Waiting for somewhere safe

Back in 2023, Nafeesa did not stay long in Am Dafock, where she'd arrived with her family after the murder of her husband. Like thousands of other Sudanese seeking distance from the war, the insecurity at the border pushed her onward to Birao.

There, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) worked with local authorities to register new arrivals and organize their survival. "They gave us blankets and mattresses for my children," she said. "They gave me the house where I am staying now."

Today, more than 27,000 Sudanese refugees live in and around Birao, an overwhelming number for a town that claims fewer than 18,000 residents of its own. "This is a rather unusual situation," acknowledged Jofroy Fabrice Sanguebe-Nadji, a UNHCR staff member on the ground.

"The arrival of a significant number of refugees has put a strain on resources that were already limited in the first place." Water and basic services have been stretched thin.

People entered at night and killed the boy. We couldn't find him.

In Korsi, the refugee neighborhood where Nafeesa now lives, humanitarian organisations have carved out a delicate ecosystem. "This is not a camp," explained Mr. Sanguebe-Nadji. "It is an out-of-camp approach, where refugees live alongside the host community."

Still, most residents remain dependent on humanitarian aid - food assistance, shelter materials, access to healthcare, and schooling - even as financial support dwindles. "The main difficulty today," the official added, "is the critical lack of funding."

Nafeesa survives by selling whatever small goods she can find. "They gave me a small table for the market," she said. "Thank God, life is okay."

Safety, though, is still an issue. While the agreement signed in Am Dafock has eased intercommunal tensions along the border, violence still creeps in - including here, in Birao. "The other day, they killed a boy in the camp," Nafeesa said. "People entered at night and killed the boy. We couldn't find him."

Returning to Sudan with her mother and children is out of the question, at least for now; the war has swallowed her past. But staying in Birao is not guaranteed either. Without lasting protection and steady work, displacement remains a temporary fix, not a long-term solution.

And so Nafeesa waits. Like the uneasy calm along the Sudanese border, her refuge endures - for now.

Humanitarian emergency

• After nearly three years of war, humanitarian funding for Sudan has fallen sharply. The World Food Program has warned that food aid could run out in March.
• In 2026, the UN is asking for $2.9 billion to provide lifesaving aid to 20 million people in Sudan, with another $500 million to help 2.6 million Sudanese refugees who have fled the country.
• The UN is also asking for $264 million to help 1.3 million people in the Central African Republic.

Donate

Donations to these agencies help sustain food distributions, shelter, health services, and protection for civilians affected by the conflict:

• World Food Programme (WFP) - Emergency food assistance in Sudan and CAR
• UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) - Protection and support for refugees and displaced people from Sudan

Further reading

For more information, please consult our coverage on Sudan's civil war, the Central African Republic, and peacekeeping operations, as well as the official websites of MINUSCA and UN peacekeeping.