Community-based mutual aid groups are continuing to play a leading role in the humanitarian response to Sudan’s conflict, especially as rampant insecurity restricts international relief agencies from accessing the most affected areas.

Yet the grassroots groups – which morphed out of neighbourhood activist networks that spent years fighting against authoritarianism – are facing growing threats from the warring parties and are receiving little financial support from international donors.

“There are many threats,” said Mohammed Ibrahim*, a member of a local group providing meals to people in the Gerief West area of the besieged capital, Khartoum. “Either a shell falls on us while we are cooking or [the warring parties] raid the place.”

Sudan’s conflict began on 15 April and pits the country’s main paramilitary group – the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – against the regular army. Nearly four million people have been displaced by the fighting, which centres on Khartoum and the Darfur region.

Youth-driven volunteer networks have set up “emergency response rooms” across the country in response to the fighting, the collapse of the state, and a slow-moving international relief effort.

Members of the emergency rooms – which are sheltering displaced people, supporting hospitals, and securing food and water supplies – said their decentralised, horizontal structure and people-centred principles showcase a different kind of politics in Sudan.

In interviews with The New Humanitarian and Ayin Media, the volunteers said they are also building on a history of mutual aid in Sudan – one cultivated by communities facing wars waged by the state and, in more recent years, with flooding and the pandemic.

Still, the responders said they face multiple obstacles that challenge their work. They said they risk being arrested by both the RSF and the army, which accuse volunteers of supporting their rivals, and see the groups as something to control rather than support.

Emergency rooms currently receive most of their money from local and diaspora donations, but volunteers said these funds are not commensurate with their needs, and they are hard to receive due to the collapse of the banking system.

Though some international NGOs are working with the groups, progress has been slow, said Sara Abbas from the Sudan Crisis Coordination Unit at Shabaka, an organisation that amplifies diaspora and civil society groups in the aid sector.

“There still isn’t enough support coming through for the local grassroots response,” said Abbas. “There is still a mentality that the local response is an afterthought, that it is not really something that is integral to the international humanitarian response.”

Filling the void: ‘Beautiful values emerged from this hardship’

The emergency rooms include many members of Sudan’s resistance committees. These non-hierarchical groups were central to the protests that forced out former leader Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and set the stage for a democratic transition.

The committees were marginalised from the transition process, however. While they called for full civilian rule, internationally supported processes led to unpopular power-sharing deals between military actors and civilian politicians.

The committees and emergency rooms have gained increasing prominence in recent months as they have filled gaps left by international aid groups, which are facing what the UN has called the toughest humanitarian access conditions in the world.

“I picked up the volunteer’s phone number from social media and asked for help, and they immediately responded and brought me water. I was so grateful.”

Many aid agencies have been unable to operate in Darfur, Khartoum, and other conflict-affected areas. As a result, they have had to suspend programmes and lay off hundreds of mostly Sudanese aid workers. 

Bureaucratic impediments imposed by government authorities have further restricted international agencies. They have struggled to get visas for expatriate staff, and permits to import and move aid supplies are regularly withheld.