Sudan Welfare Monitoring Survey (WMS)

Amid the world’s largest displacement crisis, Sudan’s multi-layered emergencies demand evidence that is both fast and actionable.

The World Bank’s Sudan Welfare Monitoring Survey (WMS), funded by the STARS Trust Fund, a high frequency phone survey, has been calling households in Sudan since October 2024, swiftly capturing shifts in displacement, assets, food security, mental health, education and employment. This data seeks to inform policy priorities and project design by the World Bank and other development actors.

Waves 1 to 3 of this survey focused primarily on tracking and gathering intelligence from non-displaced as well as internally displaced Sudanese nationals to reflect the growing impact of the ongoing conflict. In collaboration with UNHCR, Wave 4 introduced refugees as an additional stratum, in an effort to address the growing challenges faced by refugees who have fled neighboring countries to seek asylum inside Sudan. With support from the World Bank – UNHCR Joint Data Center (JDC), UNHCR led a listing exercise of refugees in the 4 states (Blue Nile, White Nile, Kassala, and Red Sea), which resulted into a representative selection of refugee households with a mobile phone living in those states.

The first two rounds of the Welfare Monitoring Survey covered 13 of the country’s 18 states (excluding the Darfur and Kordofan regions) allowing humanitarian actors to monitor conditions in areas remotely. In its first two rounds of the phone survey, the team interviewed roughly 1,330 households each time, with Wave 1 and Wave 2 between October - November 2024. Because participation depends on owning a mobile phone, the respondent pool skews toward adults aged 18 and above who are more urban, better educated and better connected than the national average.

Beginning with Round 3, the sampling methodology was redesigned to ensure representation across all 18 states. WMS-3 successfully reached more than 3,000 households nationwide. Building on this approach, WMS-4 introduced an additional refugee stratum to facilitate direct comparisons between refugees and Sudanese nationals. In total, 4,241 households were interviewed in WMS-4, including 3,129 national households (with 827 internally displaced persons) and 1,112 refugees.

• Mobility is largely driven by conflict. 46% of households have been displaced at least once; 40% remain displaced and only 6% have returned. Six in ten displaced households originate from Khartoum, and just 7% live in an IDP camp.
• The conflict has led to asset depletion at the household level. Over 60% of families who owned a home before the war say it has been destroyed, looted or lost; land and livestock losses are widespread in rural areas.
• Food insecurity is one of the largest deprivations. 41% of households have poor or borderline food consumption, going all the way up to 47% in peri-urban areas; displaced and female-headed households fare worst.
• Psychosocial support is warranted, but often absent. One in four persons show signs of depression and some 35% report moderate to severe anxiety prevalence, with higher prevalence among those exposed to intense conflict or weak social support networks.

• Lack of education facilities could plague the displaced population for generations. School attendance for 6 to 15-year-olds has fallen by 26% for boys and 21% for girls; nearly half the children in White Nile and Khartoum are now out of school.
• Very few can afford the healthcare they desperately need. 82% of households that failed to obtain treatment cite lack of money as the reason; among the most food-insecure families only 15% accessed the child-health care they needed.
• Unemployment is rampant in areas of high conflict. Employment has collapsed by 35% for men and 27% for women. Job loss is most acute for the better-educated and those in high-intensity conflict areas.
• Lack of proper shelter is a major driver of protection risk among the displaced. The share of households living in makeshift or other precarious shelters has risen from 14% pre-war to 25% today.
• Access to services has dwindled over time. Reliable electricity and piped water have both declined, with water now available fewer than seven days a week for one-third of households.

• Displacement remains high, with a strong desire to return home. Over one-third (35%) of the surveyed population are displaced at the time of the survey, with the majority (53%) originating from Khartoum. Despite the ongoing conflict, 81% of displaced individuals express an intention to return to their area of origin, although those from rural areas are slightly less likely to want to return than their urban counterparts.
• Housing damage is widespread and disproportionately affects the displaced. Nearly half of all respondents report damage to houses in their communities. This destruction is most acutely felt by the displaced population, with 55% reporting housing damage compared to 44% of non-displaced residents, reflecting the severe impact of conflict on urban infrastructure.
• Food insecurity is critical, particularly among IDPs. Displaced households are significantly more vulnerable, with 62% facing poor or borderline food consumption compared to 47% of non-displaced households. Food insecurity is most severe in conflict-intense regions like the Darfur states and West Kordofan, where residents are up to 85% more likely to experience insufficient food consumption than those in safer states like River Nile.
• Economic disruption from new banknotes has hindered access to cash. The transition to new banknotes has created difficulties for roughly one-third of the population (34% of displaced and 36% of non-displaced), with households citing the limited availability of new notes and the inability to convert old currency as primary challenges.
• Sudanese remain optimistic in harsh economic times. Half of Sudanese expect the economy to improve over the next year—40 percent foresee better conditions and 10 percent much better—while only 20 percent anticipate deterioration, reflecting a resilience that could support recovery if matched by visible progress.
• Trust has eroded sharply in areas hardest hit by conflict and displacement. Although interpersonal trust within families remains relatively strong, confidence in other ethnic groups and the wider public is markedly lower. Displaced individuals report significantly weaker trust than non-displaced people, and institutional trust is especially diminished in high-conflict regions.
• Women assume greater leadership and economic roles, yet discrimination against them remains widespread. Women are taking on much larger economic roles, with female breadwinners rising from as low as 6% in South Darfur to nearly 67% in South Kordofan, and women heading households reaching more than half of households in some areas like West Kordofan. At the same time, discrimination remains widespread: roughly one-third of respondents report marginalization of women, with levels extremely high in places such as West Kordofan and North Darfur and far lower in states like Gedaref.

Wave 4 was expanded to include refugees living in Sudan into the phone survey, with support from the World Bank – UNHCR Joint Data Center (JDC). Some of the key findings are as follows:

• Refugees in Sudan face the highest levels of food insecurity when compared to internally displaced and non-displaced Sudanese nationals, with about 62 percent having poor or borderline food consumption and heavily relying on increasingly reduced food rations from humanitarians.
• Employment prospects for refugees are weak, with more than half not working, growing dependence on aid, and significant legal and practical barriers to accessing formal labor markets and farmland.
• Internally displaced persons in Sudan experience severe and rising food insecurity, with around 6 percent having poor or borderline food consumption, yet a much smaller share receive food assistance compared to refugees. Internally displaced persons in Sudan experience severe and rising food insecurity, with around 61 percent having poor or borderline food consumption, yet a much smaller share receive food assistance compared to refugees.
• Hard survival choices made today are compromising tomorrow’s prospects. Households are selling assets and cutting back on health and education—especially refugees and IDPs—undermining their ability to recover. About 76% of refugees and 58% of IDPs report reducing non-food essentials, compared with 45% of nationals.
• Many IDPs are concentrated in highly affected states such as North and Central Darfur, face collapsing basic services, and resort to harmful coping strategies like selling productive assets and pulling children out of school.
• Most IDPs express a strong desire to return home, but their prospects for safe and sustainable return depend on improved security, access to livelihoods, and restoration of essential services in areas of origin.

Find out more: Policy Note - Sudan's Crisis: Navigating Disparities, Resilience, and Recovery for Refugees, IDPs, and Host Communities | Sudan Regional Crisis - Development Action Platform