When Sudanese Montrealer Thowiba Mansour found out that the federal government had set up a temporary program to reunite people in the war-torn country with their Canadian families, she was so excited that she couldn’t sleep.
“I was very happy, I was just planning how I would get my family here. They would be safe,” she said.
But there was a catch.
Quebec had opted not to participate in the program, a possibility that hadn’t crossed Mansour’s mind.
The program opened in late February. As of Sept. 7, applications for 7,300 people were being processed, according to Global Affairs Canada. New applications are no longer being accepted.
Many Sudanese Canadians are holding on to the hope that their loved ones will be approved, but they say some have already died while their application is still being processed.
In the past year and a half, the United Nations says nearly 20,000 people have died as a direct result of the violence, but other estimates suggest as many as 150,000 people may have been killed.
On April 15, 2023, in the capital of Khartoum, fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces as part of disputes over how to move from military rule to free elections.
The war has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, with half of the country’s 50 million people lacking food and famine taking hold in part of the North Darfur region. More than 10 million have been displaced, according to the International Organization for Migration.
The rainy season has damaged many homes and shelters across the country and a wave of waterborne disease has emerged.
There are also alarming reports that civilians are being killed because of their ethnicity — specifically in the Darfur region.
‘The right to have our family members safe’
Many Quebecers are currently trying to get their families to safety.
But with the province’s decision, Mansour says she feels like a second-class citizen.
“We are proudly Quebecers, but still we don’t have the same rights,” she said.
“We are human beings, we are citizens, we are participating in the prosperity of the province and we have the right to have our family members safe and supported.”
In a statement, Quebec’s Ministry of Immigration said the province “already contributes a great deal to the humanitarian effort in general, notably by welcoming a large proportion of asylum seekers arriving in Canada.”
Mansour’s family members have experienced many displacements and have been forced by members of the militia to move from the capital city to Madani where they lived in the backyard of a friend’s house.
Mansour said her family has since moved further from the militia attacks, but she says life as a displaced person is very challenging.
She says people like her older sister’s three children, who have special needs, are “always forgotten.”
“I see her suffering living with those kids, without proper food, without health services, without education. It’s not easy,” she said. “The mothers are suffering very silently.”
Duha Elmardi, an organizer with the Canada-based Sudan Solidarity Collective, is another Sudanese Montrealer who shares the same pain and stress as Mansour: being away from her loved ones.
Her family is scattered across six countries and her parents live in war-torn Khartoum.
“We don’t know if we will ever be able to see each other,” she said.
For the past few months, she’s been working hard to get her relatives out of the country like many members of the diaspora who are taking care of entire families who have no income due to the war, according to Elmardi.
“The financial toll that falls on the diaspora right now is really huge,” she said.
Elmardi says members of the Sudanese community are very “frustrated” by Quebec’s self-exclusion from the program.
A ‘discrepancy’ in Canadian policy
But she also finds the federal government’s response “embarrassing” given the scale of the war.
She saw Ukrainians fleeing to Canada and thought it was “really wonderful,” but it made her realize the government had the power to do the same for anyone fleeing war.
“You can decide when such laws are needed,” said Elmardi. “There is a very clear stance when it comes to African countries that is being taken and you don’t have to dig so much to be able to see that. It’s very clear.”
In a statement, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada said it was “important to note that the situations in Sudan and Ukraine are different.”
The federal department noted the emergency authorization for Ukrainians was a temporary resident program, while the program for Sudanese people can lead to permanent residency.
“When responding to international crises, Canada tailors each response to meet the unique needs of those who require our support,” the statement said.
Khalid Medani, director of McGill University’s Institute of Islamic Studies and chair of African studies, says he is coping with the difficult news impacting his homeland by bringing the concerns of the Sudanese community to the media and giving lectures on the situation at American universities.
He says Sudanese Canadians think Canada should play a much stronger role in providing logistical and financial support to UN agencies and other aid agencies.
Another way to help families, according to Medani, would be to lift the cap on the federal program applications and removing the financial and bureaucratic prerequisites, including biometrics which can be hard for refugees to obtain.
“We have a very large number of them who’ve perished in Sudan, waiting to come to Canada. So the situation is beyond distressing,” said Medani.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says it introduced a humanitarian pathway in February to reunite Canadian families with loved ones affected by the war in Sudan. By Sept. 7, no one had arrived yet. Khalid Medani, director of McGill University’s Institute of Islamic Studies and chair of African studies, says there is a ‘discrepancy’ in the Canadian government’s response to other crises like those in Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria, and the war in Sudan.
“The international community should not look at this as somehow helping the Sudanese out of charity. They have to understand that the international community is partially responsible,” he said, describing the conflict as a prolonged “proxy war” with the involvement of other countries.
In a statement, Global Affairs Canada said the Minister of International Development announced that Canada is allocating $132.2 million in international assistance funding.
“This includes $100.7 million in humanitarian assistance and $31.5 million in development assistance to address needs in Sudan and its neighbouring countries,” read the statement.
Elmardi believes that a “better immigration response” is needed to enable many community members to bring their families here, and to make room for Sudanese who have no relatives in Canada.
“Every day is extremely dangerous,” she said.
