Promises and silence: Sudanese Canadians struggle to save families from war-torn Sudan

Soud keeps her phone close to her — always within her reach, waiting to hear what she doesn’t want to hear. Every time her phone rings, her soul wants to rip through her body.

“I go to sleep, and when I hear the phone ring, I just know that something must have happened to my family,” she tells The New Arab. 

Soud, a Sudanese Canadian who arrived in Canada in 2001, lives in Toronto, but her heart is in Sudan, where her three siblings are stuck dodging bullets and militias. 

Sudan's conflict, which started as a personal rivalry between Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and General Hemedti of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has now escalated into a violent conflict. 

Since April 2023, Sudan has been in complete chaos, after a war erupted as a result of the power struggle between the Sudanese army and the RSF militia. From death and displacement, to starvation and extreme inflation, to a spike in sexual violence, Sudan’s war has been labelled by the UN as “the most devastating humanitarian and displacement crisis in the world.”

One of Soud’s biggest fears is losing all her family to this crisis, especially since one of her loved ones already couldn’t make it. 

Soud lost her 80-year-old father to this war, who naturally passed away while waiting for safety and a way out. Now, she fears that her siblings could be next.

“I’m a widow and my family in Sudan is all I have. If they die, I won’t know what to do with myself,” she shares. 

While the Sudanese in Sudan live through a war-torn conflict and wait for their families to help them escape, Sudanese Canadians are fighting their own battles against constant silence, delays and inaction from the Canadian government as they try to get their families out of Sudan. 

A programme of hope turned hopeless 

On December 28, 2023, Canada introduced the family-based permanent residence pathway, which allows Sudanese Canadians to sponsor loved ones fleeing the war. The programme was launched as “special” and “urgent.” 

Later in 2025, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) took a further step, promising an increase from 3,250 to over 5,000 in the number of applications processed for the pathway programme. The ultimate goal was for Canada to welcome approximately 10,000 people from Sudan through this pathway.

The programme promised families a quicker immigration process. Soud says it gave her and her late father hope, a feeling they thought they had lost forever.

But, more than a year after its launch, the process now appears to be slow, and for Soud, those promises have not been translated into action. 

“If the programme were done right, my father would be with me here, not buried underground,” said Soud.

As of April 9, 2025, according to a statement shared by the IRCC, more than 7,900 individuals have applied through this pathway to join their family members in Canada. But, since its launch, only 716 individuals have been admitted to the country.

“When I applied, I was very hopeful that I would finally be able to meet my father. But it did not happen, and he passed away waiting for me to call him. He could’ve been with me here right now.”

Soud and her father were very close. Despite being oceans apart, it only brought them closer. They used to talk all the time, but a week before his death, she wasn’t able to contact him because the internet had been cut off in Sudan. She never got to give him a proper farewell. 

Left behind are Soud’s siblings, who are constantly moving from one area of Sudan to another, and the threat of being killed and losing one another is just another part of their journey.

Soud, on the other hand, has been doing everything she can to bring her family to her. She says now it’s up to the government. 

“I have given them [the Canadian government] whatever they asked for. What more do they want? They don’t even want to tell us what is missing from our part to speed up the process,” she said.

Soud isn’t alone. Rasha, a Sudanese Canadian living in Mississauga, is also stuck in a constant cycle of silence. 

Out of desperation, she contacted her MP, Charles Sousa, a Liberal Member of Parliament for Mississauga-Lakeshore, hoping the application process would be expedited. He told her to have hope, assuring her that the government is doing its best. For Rasha, “it’s only talking and nothing else.”

“The lack of response from the government feels like discrimination. A dirty game of politics in which they are using us as cards to play with,” she tells The New Arab.

When the pathway programme was announced in 2023, Rasha also immediately applied for her mother and three siblings. But in the process of that long wait, her mother passed away this year in January. 

“My mother’s file was still in Ottawa when she passed away,” she said. “I couldn’t do anything.”

Now Rasha fears for the rest of her family — her two brothers and a sister who are still trapped, surviving and waiting.

“One of my brothers had to send his kids to Egypt. Now, when I talk to him, I feel he needs some psychological treatment because of the stress he’s been under,” she said.

Even the children — Rasha’s nieces and nephews, who are all younger than 10—are also struggling and are no longer able to go to school.

“My brother cannot go to see his kids, and he cannot bring them back to Sudan, while I am still here promising them that everything will be alright,” said Rasha.

Payment in exchange for safety 

The programme is humanitarian, but for Zainab, a Sudanese-Canadian activist, the process feels very extractive. She says that it failed the people that it was supposed to help. 

She has several family members stuck in Sudan and has been paying the Canadian government excessive amounts of fees per individual for the application process in exchange for their safety. But no matter the amount, she says, “the programme still seems like a failure.”

Zainab says that if she wants to sponsor a family of four, she has to pay over $1,620 just for the applications to be processed — the rest of the payment comes with the next steps.

“I'm giving the government over $1,620 to process an application, and that is money that I cannot give to my relatives in Sudan who need it for basic food, shelter, or to move to safer areas.”

As for those living through the war, thousands continue to live under dire conditions.

Dr Reza Eshaghian, an emergency medical coordinator with Médecins Sans Frontières Canada (MSF), currently stationed in Darfur, Sudan, spoke on the current conditions in Sudan. 

“Infrastructure and healthcare systems are no longer in place. They have been completely destroyed,” he said. “The basic lifestyle we take for granted has completely collapsed here in Sudan.” 

Dr Eshaghian says there are destroyed hospitals, disease outbreaks, no clean water and children starving in Sudan. He says that for a mother to give birth is equivalent to a death sentence. 

“In one village, we saw 17 maternal deaths in just three months due to a lack of access to maternal care,” Dr Eshaghian told The New Arab.

There are regions in Sudan that MSF is unable to reach. In these cases, local communities are mainly surviving due to volunteer efforts organised by the Sudanese civilians.

“There is still some life that we see in terms of family and community, which is very heartwarming and reassuring,” he said.

Dr Eshaghian says that MSF continues to deliver aid where possible, but the situation is deteriorating rapidly, with inaction and a growing need for humanitarian assistance from around the world.

Miles away, in Canada, the families of the Sudanese trapped in this war are at the forefront of demanding action from the Canadian government to do their part.  

Earlier this year, diaspora groups such as the Sudanese Canadian Community Association signed an open letter saying the pathway programme faces “discriminatory barriers” and is slow in the process.

This letter eventually led to Ottawa increasing the quota for the pathway programme for Sudanese refugees to be resettled in Canada. However, Quebec is still excluded from it.

In response to the delays and the exclusion of Quebec from this programme, Sudanese from all parts of Canada have been protesting for the government to take immediate action and bring their families to safety.  

“They're being shelled, shot at and bombed, and there's nothing I can do. The only act of solidarity for me is to try and advocate for them from abroad,” said Zainab.

“My activism is the only way I know to contribute and help with this conflict.”

Those whose loved ones are trapped in Sudan have one message for the Canadian government: act now before it’s too late.

“Everybody should be treated the same way, no matter what. With empathy and humanity,” said Zainab. “Right now, it seems like we are a burden.”

Due to security concerns, the sources in this story have asked not to share their full names or their family members' names.

Shumaila Mubarak is a News Editor at the Eyeopenor and a staff writer at Analyst News based in Toronto. She is currently studying journalism and enjoys writing on topics related to human rights and politics. Through her journalism, she hopes to uplift and report on marginalised communities