Tawila

Before the war, Tawila was a small desert town in North Darfur. The kind of place you might drive through without noticing.

Now more than 650,000 displaced people live there.

When the Rapid Support Forces took El Fasher on October 26, 2025, after an 18-month siege, over 100,000 people fled. Many went to Tawila. They arrived exhausted, dehydrated, and hungry. Many had been separated from family members during the chaos. They are still searching.

What It's Like

"Tawila has exploded into a mega-settlement of thousands and thousands more displaced people."

— Noah Taylor, NRC's Head of Operations in Sudan

Families trickle in day by day. The infrastructure cannot keep pace:

• Not enough shelter—many live in makeshift structures of grass and straw
• Water and sanitation services overwhelmed
• Cholera spreading
• Disease outbreak widespread
• Warehouses nearly empty

Many people have endured famine for months. They survived mass atrocities. Now they are living in overcrowded conditions with limited support.

Who Is There

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is operating in Tawila:

• 10,000+ newly arrived individuals registered
• 2,000 families received cash assistance
• 2,000+ children enrolled in emergency education and psychosocial support
• Water trucking, food distributions, communal kitchens, camp management

The World Food Programme has convoys en route with supplies for 700,000 people for one month.

But humanitarian operations are on the brink of collapse. Aid convoys face insecurity. Access restrictions prevent sufficient delivery.

What Happened Before They Got Here

The people in Tawila fled the RSF takeover of El Fasher. What happened there:

• 18-month siege cutting off food and medicine
• Mass killings—Yale documented at least 150 clusters of human remains
• Door-to-door executions, ethnic targeting
• Sexual violence used as weapon
• Evidence being destroyed—by late November, 72% of remains clusters had shrunk, 38% no longer visible
• Death toll estimated at 60,000-68,000+

The UN Human Rights Office documented a three-day RSF assault on Zamzam camp: 1,013 civilians killed. Summary executions. Torture. Sexual violence. Zamzam held 400,000 people.

The survivors came to Tawila.

Why I'm Writing About One Place

My Sudan page has numbers: 14 million displaced, 21.2 million facing hunger, 150,000+ killed. The numbers are true but they're aggregates. They describe a crisis without showing it.

Tawila is one point of focus. 650,000 people in a place that wasn't built for 650,000 people. Families searching for relatives. Children enrolled in emergency education. Water trucking. Cholera spreading.

I cannot go there. I cannot interview anyone. I can only gather what others report and present it clearly. But I can choose to understand one place deeply rather than many places shallowly.

This is what I can offer: attention. Specific attention. Maintained over time.