Sudan’s war shows no sign of abating as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis hits the two-year mark today, with 25 million people (around half the country) facing acute hunger, and famine declared in 10 areas.
The fighting between the army (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – driven by deep political and social divisions and an effort to crush Sudan’s revolution – has produced the world’s largest displacement crisis, uprooting over 12 million people.
The RSF, no longer ascendant militarily, has committed a relentless series of atrocity crimes – killing hundreds just in the past few days in a camp in Darfur – while the SAF has carried out indiscriminate bombings and civilian killings as it reclaims key territory, including the capital Khartoum.
Despite modest progress in accessing conflict areas over the past few months, international humanitarian efforts remain deeply hobbled, with both sides obstructing and profiting from aid – as our special report last week detailed.
The backbone of relief efforts has been youth-driven and neighbourhood-based mutual aid groups known as emergency response rooms – which were set up at the outset of the war – as well as other local community initiatives.
With support from local and diaspora networks, as well as international donors, community responders have reached millions – running soup kitchens, supporting clinics, keeping infrastructure going, and launching education and women’s initiatives.
Mutual aid is central to many crises, but the scale and impact of local efforts in Sudan has been profound, and volunteers say their solidarity-based model offers a blueprint for both a new kind of politics and a radically different humanitarian response.
To mark two years of conflict, here is a list of some of our best recent reporting on mutual aid – almost all of it written by Sudanese journalists who double up as emergency response room volunteers, working either inside or outside the country.
The list highlights both the breadth of the work and the challenges volunteers face – from security threats by the warring parties to chronic funding shortages, now worsened by US cuts that have disrupted key programmes.
Written by journalist and volunteer Rawh Nasir, this piece focuses on the communal kitchens providing daily meals for hundreds of thousands of people in Khartoum and its sister cities. The kitchens were especially lifesaving given the absence of international aid groups, which abandoned Khartoum at the outset of the fighting and were prevented from sending in relief by the army while the city was held by the RSF. Volunteers said they work long hours preparing food, but also have time to participate in social activities and support one another. Several said the work helps them feel powerful and resilient, and that before joining the kitchens they had felt traumatised by war and sometimes too afraid to leave their houses.
Women and girls have been especially impacted by the conflict, with sexual violence used widely as a weapon of war and vital health services cut off in conflict zones. Yet many are still receiving support – psychological, medical, and economic – from dedicated, women-led emergency response room teams. To better understand their work, investigative journalist Malaz Emad spoke to nearly a dozen members of women’s response rooms across Sudan. They said their groups provide a lifeline for women and girls, highlighting how their needs have been neglected by international responders. They emphasised the sense of community these groups offer, helping members cope with the war, while also discussing the challenges they face – from sexual violence perpetrated by RSF members to army-aligned authorities restricting their access to women in need.
Though best known for running communal soup kitchens, the emergency response rooms do so much more, as this gripping story by mutual aid volunteer Hanin Ahmed shows. Last year, RSF members began ramping up abuses against civilians in the central state of Al Jazirah, conducting mass killings and sexual assaults against women and girls. What followed was the largest civilian-led rescue effort of the war, as volunteers (including Hanin) worked around the clock to bring civilians out of the devastated state. The effort was hampered from the start by a communications blackout, scarce funds, and a rapidly changing security situation, but volunteers still saved vast numbers of lives while showing yet another side to mutual aid.
This story by Sudanese journalist and political analyst Mohamed Mustafa explores the learning centres and safe spaces set up by volunteers to address two years of disrupted education. While schools have reopened in many northern and eastern states with functioning administrations, it is local communities carrying the load in conflict-hit areas. That includes parents homeschooling, volunteer teachers providing ad hoc support, and emergency response rooms funding educators to teach the national curriculum, alongside informal centres for art, sports, and music.
A large proportion of the internally displaced people in Sudan are not staying in camps or informal settlements but with host families, little-heralded frontline responders who often share everything they have with friends, family, and strangers. In this first person piece, Yosra Hamid Mohammed Adam, who works for the international NGO Mercy Corps, shares why she is sheltering relatives, and describes the many challenges her family faces. “I hope that sharing my story will help raise awareness about the role that hosts are playing in the humanitarian response here, because right now neither hosts nor our guests are receiving much support from humanitarian agencies,” she said.
A volunteer detained for weeks without their family knowing their whereabouts; another shot in the abdomen by a fighter angry that the food they were handing out to locals had run out; a third beaten for simply taking photographs. These are some of the stories shared with Rawh Nasir by volunteers who described facing repeated attacks from the army and the RSF. More than 50 volunteers have died during the war – some deliberately targeted by the warring parties, others caught in crossfire or lost to treatable illnesses due to a lack of medicine.
In the past few weeks hundreds of communal kitchens have shut down as a result of the dismantling of USAID, which accounted for a major chunk of the budget that emergency response rooms depended upon. This piece from Rawh Nasir and Malaz Emad looks at the impact of the cuts on volunteers. It also explores the impact of a new crackdown by the Sudanese army and allied militias. They are targeting volunteers as they reclaim territory from the RSF, falsely accusing them of collaborating with the paramilitary group and even placing their names on hit lists for retaliation.
While this special report, led by staff editor Philip Kleinfeld, focuses on the challenges facing international responders, it also highlights key issues affecting the emergency response rooms as the war hits the two-year mark. It examines the impact of donor cuts on mutual aid and raises concerns that, as international organisations fight for survival, they could end up competing with local responders for shrinking resources – undermining a collaboration that had been steadily growing over the past year.
Edited by Andrew Gully.
