An expansive cross-border investigation exposes the brutality faced by refugees fleeing Sudan’s war and the impunity that sustains it
In a devastating and meticulously reported investigation, ARIJ’s Salma Abdel Aziz and Ehab Zeidan uncover a hidden humanitarian catastrophe unfolding on Egypt’s southern border. Through interviews with survivors, smugglers and activists, a survey of 324 Sudanese refugees, and interactive data visualisations, the reporters trace the harrowing journeys of those fleeing Sudan’s civil war, only to fall into the hands of traffickers and corrupt officials.
The piece opens with the testimony of Saeed, a 22-year-old Sudanese student whose dream of safety in Egypt ended in violent rape. He had fled Atbara, in northern Sudan, when the war halted his university studies. Smuggled across the desert in January 2024, he was intercepted near the Al-Kasarat quarries, considered an unpoliced no-man’s-land just outside Aswan. After refusing to pay an extra “fee” to one of the drivers, Saeed was beaten, raped and left half-naked in the sand. A later medical report confirmed internal injuries requiring surgery he could not afford.
He is one of thousands whose bodies and futures are held hostage in this desolate stretch of desert, a shadow corridor of violence where organised gangs operate freely beyond the reach of Egyptian law enforcement.
The investigation documents a spectrum of abuses: sexual assault, robbery, kidnapping and extortion. Survivors describe masked men ambushing vans, raping women and children at gunpoint, and demanding ransoms for release. One case, that of Suha, a widow travelling with her two children, encapsulates the horror. She was ambushed by eight men, stripped and assaulted while her seven-year-old son begged for mercy. Her story ends not in relief but in further despair: working in a Sudanese restaurant in Aswan for the equivalent of $2 a day, unable to pay for her children’s schooling.
A survey of Sudanese refugees conducted by the reporting team found that four per cent of women had been raped, 10 per cent sexually harassed, 33 per cent robbed, and eight per cent kidnapped for ransom. The investigation notes that most victims are too afraid to report crimes, fearing deportation under Egypt’s restrictive asylum system.
Under Egyptian law, refugees who enter the country irregularly have no legal protection until registered with the UNHCR, a process that can take up to a year and requires traveling 1,000 kilometres to Cairo. The article’s interactive map, which traces four smuggling routes from Sudan into Aswan, illustrates the vast distances, dangers and institutional void that leave refugees exposed to systemic abuse.
Experts interviewed in the piece, including lawyers and human rights activists, argue that Egypt’s 2024 asylum law effectively criminalises refugees. It punishes irregular entry rather than protecting those fleeing conflict, contradicting Egypt’s obligations under the 1951 Geneva Convention and the 1969 OAU Refugee Convention, both of which guarantee the right to seek asylum without penalty.
The reporters also expose how Egypt’s visa restrictions on Sudanese nationals, imposed just weeks after the outbreak of the war in April 2023, have driven a booming underground economy of smuggling and exploitation. Smugglers charge between $40 and $60 per person to cross the desert in convoys of vehicles that evade police checkpoints using reconnaissance cars and hideouts known as storage points. Gangs intercept these routes with near impunity.
When victims seek redress, they face a bureaucratic maze and institutional neglect. The UNHCR, hamstrung by a severe global funding shortfall, a $98 million gap in Egypt alone, has suspended most medical and cash assistance, closed regional offices, and limited refugee registration to Cairo. Saeed and Suha both reached out to the agency for help; Saeed received only a slip of paper with a list of NGOs, while Suha was given a distant appointment nearly a year later.
The UNHCR’s official response, published in full within the report, acknowledges these failures but places responsibility on the Egyptian state. It cites “an overwhelming influx of more than 1.5 million Sudanese” and confirms that reduced staff and resources have “forced the suspension of field missions” and “delayed registration”. Egypt, it notes, has refused to authorise a UNHCR presence at the border.
Meanwhile, Egyptian authorities continue to frame refugee entry as a security issue rather than a humanitarian one. Law enforcement rarely investigates abuses against Sudanese refugees, and new asylum legislation allows for deportation or imprisonment for irregular entry.
In its conclusion, the investigation situates these personal tragedies within a wider economy of silence and complicity. Egypt’s booming agricultural and construction sectors rely heavily on migrant labour, while refugees remain officially invisible. Their suffering becomes another uncounted cost of the war in Sudan and the tightening of borders across the region.
At once expansive in scope and intimate in detail, this investigation stands out for its interactive documentation of survivor testimonies, its forensic reconstruction of smuggling routes, and its unflinching portrayal of violence that thrives in the space between borders and bureaucracy.
Original article ‘المصيدة البشرية’ by Salma Abdel Aziz and Ehab Zeidan published in Arabic by ARIJ in partnership with Al-Muhajiron on 31 August 2025.
It is available here.
ARIJ is a leading independent investigative network in the Middle East that supports cross-border journalism exposing corruption, human rights abuses and systemic injustice across the Arab region.
Summary by ZN
