Over the last two years, international organizations like the United Nations and the World Health Organization as well as various human rights advocacy groups have called attention to a catastrophic humanitarian situation in Sudan. The numbers are staggering—more than 25 million people face food insecurity, 10 million people have been displaced, and over 600,000 individuals are experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger.
The crisis can mostly be traced to the ongoing civil war between Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Launched in early 2023, the civil war has created significant obstacles to the entry and distribution of international aid. Aid shipments face arbitrary and indefinite delays at the ports controlled by the SAF. When aid shipments do enter the country, they are often targeted, hijacked, and looted by the RSF and its affiliated militias. In other words, international aid isn’t reaching its intended recipients. And with the Trump administration’s recent efforts to shut down USAID, the aid situation is likely to worsen.
Over the last two years, international organizations like the United Nations and the World Health Organization as well as various human rights advocacy groups have called attention to a catastrophic humanitarian situation in Sudan. The numbers are staggering—more than 25 million people face food insecurity, 10 million people have been displaced, and over 600,000 individuals are experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger.
The crisis can mostly be traced to the ongoing civil war between Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Launched in early 2023, the civil war has created significant obstacles to the entry and distribution of international aid. Aid shipments face arbitrary and indefinite delays at the ports controlled by the SAF. When aid shipments do enter the country, they are often targeted, hijacked, and looted by the RSF and its affiliated militias. In other words, international aid isn’t reaching its intended recipients. And with the Trump administration’s recent efforts to shut down USAID, the aid situation is likely to worsen.
Despite such obstacles, local communities in Sudan have banded together to form volunteer-based mutual aid networks—called emergency response rooms (ERR)—to distribute critical supplies and resources to vulnerable populations. Examples include communal-based kitchens in areas particularly affected by severe hunger as well as medical clinics or centers that assist women coping with sexual violence.
Civilian agency in war settings has been increasingly recognized, with academic studies looking at how social cohesion and cooperation are possible to help people protect themselves and those around them. The success of Sudan’s ERRs challenges a popular notion that civilians lack agency in the crosshairs of conflict, and that a lack of aid means that local communities lack support. They also set an example for what a different model of aid distribution can look like, one that directly integrates local communities and their networks—and which can help sidestep the politics of aid diversion and the volatility of political cycles in far-away countries like the United States.
Current aid models prioritize a top-down infrastructure. Funds are contributed by individual countries or raised by international organizations—primarily the U.N.—via mass appeals, which then partner with large international organizations and sometimes smaller civil society organizations to deliver aid amid conflict. This has both benefits and drawbacks. As a supposedly neutral actor, U.N. bodies can be permitted by warring factions to deliver supplies via humanitarian corridors, though aid can still be restricted from reaching areas held by opponents.
This was the case in Syria, where the government of former President Bashar al-Assad prevented U.N. agencies from delivering aid to opposition-held areas. This situation required the development in 2014 by the U.N. Security Council of a special cross-border mechanism to allow aid into Idlib. A similar problem has arisen in Sudan, where the SAF has prevented U.N. agencies from delivering aid into RSF-controlled Darfur. The immense challenge of moving aid into Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war is also well-documented, with Israeli obstructions and delays leading to a catastrophic humanitarian situation for Palestinians over the course of 16 months of fighting.
The possibility for aid diversion is also high. The Assad regime in Syria, for instance, notoriously diverted aid to its various patronage networks rather than allowing the flow of resources to reach vulnerable populations. A report from 2022 found that anywhere between 40 percent and 60 percent of all aid had been diverted, with Assad’s intelligence services and armed forces as the primary benefactors.
In Sudan, the SAF has used the Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC)—a draconian institution from the days of former dictator Omar al-Bashir—to confiscate aid shipments and distribute the goods to their patronage networks. Meanwhile, looting, particularly by the RSF, has also become more prevalent amid increasingly desperate conditions. Months after the war’s outbreak, reports circulated that RSF fighters had looted an aid convoy from the U.N. Children’s Fund despite initial denials from U.N. officials. More recently, RSF fighters were also accused of looting over 7,000 tons of food shipments from the World Food Programme headed to North Darfur state. Instead, the goods were reallocated to the RSF-controlled city of Nyala.
Mutual aid networks in Sudan, by contrast, operate on a volunteer basis from local communities. Prior to the war’s outbreak, several of these networks also operated as influential neighborhood “resistance committees,” which rallied against Bashir in late 2018 and again against the architects of the 2021 military coup. When the war began, resistance committees quickly rebranded into ERRs to address local needs.
Their fundraising efforts also break from the traditional model of relying solely on individual countries or international organizations. Instead, funding is primarily contributed by Sudanese citizens themselves and members of the diaspora, although any concerned individual may donate directly. This direct stream of funding allows for a more efficient flow of aid than traditional models—a dollar donated is a dollar that directly benefits someone on the ground.
It is important to point out that localized aid groups are not necessarily unique to Sudan. The conflict in Colombia that involved multiple armed groups and which lasted for decades left at least 260,000 people dead, more than 80 percent of whom were civilians. Some grassroots groups managed to negotiate with the National Liberation Army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and other right-wing paramilitary groups to protect themselves and their communities from violence, kidnappings, and extortion.
Mutual aid networks were also important in contested or opposition-held regions of Syria during the 13-year civil war. Well-known groups such as the White Helmets emerged in the absence of international aid and support, leaving citizens to band together and create volunteer organizations in order to rescue civilians from rubble and perform other lifesaving duties.
But one challenge that such groups have faced in other conflicts is that some actors have viewed them as affiliated with or supporting one of the belligerent parties, differentiating them from U.N. organizations that are more often seen as neutral. Conversely, Sudanese ERRs continue to be perceived as impartial, affiliated with neither the SAF nor the RSF from the perspective of Sudanese civilians and the international community. This impartiality sets them aside and increases the likelihood of trust from both citizens and potential international donors, though it remains important to note that ERRs have still faced unfounded accusations of collaboration with the enemy by both of the warring parties, as well as accompanied violence.
An important aspect to the success of mutual aid networks in Sudan may be their establishment well before the outbreak of civil war in 2023. A decade earlier, in 2013, ERRs emerged in response to mass flooding across the country. They are based on the Sudanese concept of nafeer—meaning “a call to mobilize”—and are based in social traditions that call for collective resources and equal distribution. As such, preexisting and widespread support for mutual aid networks prior to the outbreak of conflict may be critical to their success at providing aid and assistance.
The model also relies on a resourced diaspora that can fund mutual aid networks. ERRs in Sudan have primarily relied on donations from family and friends abroad—as well as individuals within Sudan—but this funding model is not sustainable in the long run. Some do receive funding from international donors, but it is a fraction of what is allotted to U.N. agencies and large international organizations.
To better connect available international funding with a localized response, some ERRs banded together with donors to create the Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition, announced in September 2024 at the Clinton Global Initiative annual conference. A relatively new grassroots initiative, the group is leading efforts for international fundraising and established the goal of distributing at least $2 million to vetted Sudanese ERRs by the end of 2024.
What might the international community’s role look like under this new aid framework? First, international organizations like the U.N. can take more deliberate steps to protect these localized networks from targeting and looting by belligerent actors. As the case of the ERRs in Sudan demonstrates, impartiality does not insulate local aid efforts from harassment and violence.
Second, international organizations can pursue efforts to facilitate more consistent and direct funding to localized networks. While funders are accustomed to operating through the U.N. structure and via large international organizations that serve as implementing partners, directly funding mutual aid networks that are on the ground ensures cost efficiency as well as ownership from Sudanese civil society.
ERRs have primarily managed on their own thus far, but redirecting international funding toward these groups will prevent them from closing as the war worsens and will best support the volunteers who have firsthand access to the Sudanese citizens most in need of assistance. In the face of such dire conditions, the efforts of the ERRs force us to reevaluate notable pitfalls in current aid models and dare us to seek out alternative frameworks.
