One week after a civil war tore through Sudan’s capital city Khartoum in April 2023, Eatizaz Yusif packed what she could, helped her mother, who is in a wheelchair, into the car and drove all night to find somewhere safe. That was the first time Yusif became displaced. It would happen again and again to her and to 12 million other Sudanese people in the span of a year.
But Yusif is no ordinary displaced person. She is the country director for the International Rescue Committee , helping to manage the response to the massive humanitarian crisis her country has experienced as a result of the power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Since that first evacuation, Yusif has carried the key to her house in Khartoum everywhere she goes in the hope that one day she’ll be able to go back home.
“I'm carrying this key for one year and I don’t know when I would put it back in the door, but I couldn't get rid of it,” Yusif said this week in an interview with NPR’s Leila Fadel during a visit to Washington, D.C., to accept the Humanitarian Award from InterAction, an alliance of global charities.
Yusif now lives in Port Sudan, a small city in Sudan that is hosting hundreds of thousands of displaced people, mostly from Khartoum. Sudan is the world’s largest displacement crisis, according to the IRC and other aid organizations. On Thursday, a report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said that more than 25 millio.
