She has not yet been able to register with the UNCHR office there. She arrived in Metema around the end of April and fears being stuck there for a long time, with no clarity on whether she will have to refile her application for asylum. "The situation got worse each day," she told AFP, adding: "It's sad, it's upsetting, it's disappointing." The 24-year-old was due to leave for Canada on April 17 after her mother moved there six months earlier.īut when fighting broke out in Khartoum on April 15, her plans fell into disarray, she said. Sara was born in Khartoum after her mother fled Eritrea for Sudan more than two decades ago. "If I go back to Eritrea I will get punishment, prison, then I will be sent back to (the) military," she added. "We have no proper shelter, the water supply is not enough, I have no money."Īnd worst of all, no immediate prospects for the future. She fled to Metema with her boyfriend and his brother, the trio packing up their lives into two suitcases. "I was so happy with my new life," she told AFP, sheltering under a makeshift tarpaulin roof. The 24-year-old who worked as a waitress in Khartoum said she was devastated to leave Sudan. Sina, who only wanted to be identified by her first name, fled to the country in 2018 after enduring four years of harsh military service in Eritrea, an authoritarian state with a notorious policy of universal, indefinite conscription. Kanhoush is not the only refugee in Metema facing a second round of exile.īefore the conflict, Sudan hosted 1.1 million refugees, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR. He cannot leave Metema without travel documents and "going back to Syria is not an option". His graduation project remains unfinished and his passport stuck at the Syrian embassy in Khartoum where it was in the process of being renewed.
I had to leave a lot of memories," he told AFP. "I left a lot of things behind, it was really hard to take the decision to leave Khartoum because.
He spent over a week holed up in his home, including a few days with no electricity or water supply, before finally managing to leave Sudan's capital, carrying only a backpack.
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