Conflict-affected people in the Tawila settlement site. |Courtesy @NRC|.
Thursday, 20 November 2025
At least people displaced from Al Fasher and surrounding villages are facing a dire humanitarian crisis, as they arrived in Tawila exhausted, dehydrated, hungry, and in need of immediate support, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). Tens of thousands of others remain unaccounted for.
Tawila has now grown into a massive settlement, with thousands more families still arriving daily. Many are searching for tens of thousands of missing relatives after being separated during the chaos.
Conditions are deteriorating rapidly: water, sanitation, and shelter services cannot keep pace with the arrivals, increasing the risk of disease.
Families continue to gather at reception points each day, seeking shelter materials, blankets for the cold weather at night, as well as registration for food assistance.
Thousands remain trapped outside Tawila in areas controlled by armed groups, facing extortion, blocked movement, and no safe access to aid.
Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) teams have registered over 10,000 newly arrived individuals in Tawila, provided cash assistance to around 2,000 families, and enrolled more than 2,000 children in emergency education and psychosocial support.
Noah Taylor, the NRC head of operations, said his organisation has been supporting local responders with water trucking, food distributions, communal kitchens, and camp management as needs escalate sharply.
“When you crest the final hill into Tawila, you see what looks like a makeshift city rising out of the desert, a sprawling mass of shelters stretching toward the mountains. When I last came in May, Tawila’s camps hosted more than 200,000 people. Today, it has exploded into a mega-settlement of thousands and thousands more displaced people,” Taylor said.
“Tens of thousands of people from Al Fasher and surrounding villages are still missing or unaccounted for after the latest violence. Families are trickling in day by day and are arriving not only exhausted and hungry, they are also searching for relatives they were separated from in the chaos. I spoke with a man who had walked for 18 days from Al Fasher on one crutch after being injured. Stories like his are common,” he stated.
Taylor said eighteen months of siege, brutal fighting, deliberate attacks on civilians, and the collapse of basic services in Al Fasher have pushed people to this point.
“Driving through the camp in Tawila, you still pass families trying to build something resembling a home with nothing more than blankets and sticks. We estimate that at least 5,000 families are living in these makeshift shelters on the outskirts. Many arrived with only the clothes they were wearing.”
“We are already seeing the risks of disease increasing. The available water, sanitation, and shelter services cannot keep up with the number of people here. Unless a major surge of aid arrives, conditions will deteriorate very quickly.”
“NRC is supporting local responders, scaling up education and psychosocial support for children, helping manage the camp, and registering newly arrived families for cash assistance. More than 2,000 children are now attending NRC’s emergency learning and Better Learning Programme activities. But without safe access and a significant scale-up in funding, this camp will not withstand what is coming,” he concluded.
