In the hall of the Sudanese club in the Chadian capital N'Djamena, registration books are being opened these days that look nothing like asylum ledgers. Names being written not to request residence in exile, but to request a return ticket. Thousands of Sudanese have registered their desire to return voluntarily to their country, in a program started by Sudan's embassy in Chad in coordination with the International Organization for Migration — starting from N'Djamena and expanding to other areas, with a joint team dispatched to Abéché after registration resumed there following the consulate's suspension, with returns by air via Khartoum and Port Sudan airports, plus financial resettlement assistance whose amount has not yet been announced (Source: The Sudan Times — September 30, 2026; Darfur Follow-ups — September 15, 2026).
This scene deserves to be paused at, at length, because it turns the exile equation upside down. A refugee is usually defined by what he has lost: his home, his city, his job. These people define themselves by what they have decided: return. And the difference between loss and decision is the difference between victim and citizen. Whoever chooses to return by his own will recovers something deeper than a roof over his head: he recovers his right to be the maker of his destiny, not the recipient of the world's charity.
There is another lesson in these lists: the Sudan in its people's hearts is one and indivisible. Nobody registered to return to an "entity" or a "parallel government"; everyone returned to Sudan. And in the same week that the return ledgers filled up, an international ministerial meeting on the margins of the UN General Assembly affirmed the categorical rejection of creating parallel governance structures, stressing Sudan's sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity (Source: Panapress citing the British Foreign Office statement — October 1, 2026). Diplomacy said it in the language of statements; the returnees said it in the language of feet: one homeland.
But let us be honest with ourselves: return is not the end of the story but its beginning. True reception does not happen in the airport hall, but in what comes after: housing that shelters, a school that receives the children, work that restores dignity, and a genuine absorption plan — not a passing media celebration. And the announced financial assistance "whose amount has not yet been determined" puts the state and its institutions before a test of seriousness: a state that opens its airports to its children is obliged to open to them the doors of a dignified life as well. It is precisely here that the meaning of the institutionalism we call for appears: a state that receives, organizes and plans — not slogans raised and then forgotten.
In this return there is also a message to those who grew used to trading in the destinies of Sudanese: those who sold the blood of martyrs for positions, and those who parcel out the country at negotiation tables. Look at the lists of N'Djamena and Abéché: these people did not wait for a settlement written in a foreign capital to decide their fate; they decided it themselves, and chose the one homeland. Let the traders of politics learn from ordinary people: Sudan is not divided in closed rooms as long as its children return to it united.
And finally, this is a call to society before the state: receive the returnees as you receive your family after a long absence. For the homeland is not built with statements and speeches, but with the feet of those who return to it, and with hands extended to them — not doors closed in their faces. From every corner of Sudan they departed, and to every corner of it they return — with their diversity which is our wealth, and their unity which is our destiny.
— Nafeesa Koko