Containment Without Capacity: Sudan’s Displacement and the Limits of Border Politics

Sudan’s regional spillover cannot be understood solely through the lens of border control, refugee inflows, or humanitarian pressure. Rather, it reflects a broader governance challenge driven by the widening gap between containment and capacity. As neighbouring states tighten border regimes through increased securitisation and regulation, the institutional and economic means required to sustain these measures often remain inadequate. In such contexts, containment does not necessarily produce order; instead, it can expand informality, intensify unofficial mobility, and place greater strain on protection systems, public services, and political stability in border regions. By centring this imbalance, this policy outlook moves beyond the binary of “open” versus “closed” borders to focus on the more critical question of manageability-who can be registered, protected, and governed, and under what conditions. As the second in a series examining Sudan’s “Hunger War,” it frames displacement not only as a humanitarian issue, but as a broader test of state capacity, regional stability, and the limits of border governance.