Mutual aid in Sudan: the future of aid?
Every village & town we passed thru people would come out with their kerkade (hibiscus) juice and cold water for the ‘Khartoum travellers’. Humbling experience cause they don’t have much but were offering plenty. Why would I leave this?
Tweet, 24 April 2023, @dalliasd
El Fasher city Civilian Committee succeeded to stop gunfire between RSF and SAF. The committee included imams of mosques, civil administration men, and activists, as well as the governor of the state
Tweet, 23 April 2023, @qoga12
Calling on the fighter jet operators to stop hitting Bahri and give us a chance to exit. I have family members in wheelchairs.
Tweet, 3 May 2023, @SudanzUprising
In mid-April, as Sudan’s military leaders dragged an entire nation into chaos, death and destruction, another side of Sudan and the Sudanese emerged for those willing to look beyond the headlines. Amid the media and social media coverage of the fighting, killing and displacement, there were glimpses of efforts by ‘ordinary’ Sudanese to help themselves and those within their reach. By contrast, at the same time much traditional humanitarian aid came to a near-standstill.
Perhaps because much of the on-the-ground media coverage has been delivered by reporters who are themselves Sudanese or closely associated with Sudan, efforts by medical professionals, pharmacists, drivers, traders, water technicians and many others with skills and resources to share featured early on in mainstream media such as Al Jazeera, The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian, as well in specialised media such as The New Humanitarian. Equally, social media platforms including Twitter (now ‘X’), Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp teemed with posts about citizen-led attempts to rescue and support others in need. When electricity and internet access allowed, these platforms also served as communication channels and planning tools for responses, crowdsourcing information and locally available resources – as well as crowdfunding for these efforts.
For outside observers this provided a window, however anecdotal and incomplete, into how people and groups connected, coordinated and actioned a dizzying diversity of responses. Alongside talking to Sudanese colleagues, following relevant hashtags and handles was like witnessing a real-time and against-all-odds outpouring of humanity, solidarity, mutual aid, locally led responses, spontaneous collective self-help – whatever term you prefer for these very diverse efforts.
This article provides a top-line overview of the diversity and reach of mutual aid and other locally led efforts by Sudanese in the months following the outbreak of fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 15 April. In doing so, it is entirely indebted to the individuals and groups carrying out these efforts, to the insights shared by key interviewees inside and outside Sudan and the creators of both professional media coverage and social media contributions.
Given the nature of such a diverse response, and given the situation in Sudan, quantifying the scale and impact of these efforts is extremely difficult. Still, showcasing the diversity and indicating the scale of responses and responders and their geographic reach, along with capturing early experiences on how outsiders can support such efforts, seems important. Hopefully, this may serve as an inspiration for external actors to explore and find ways to support mutual aid and other locally led efforts – not least because humanitarian responses by most external aid actors came to a virtual standstill within hours of the outbreak of fighting, and at the time of writing remain modest in relation to increasingly desperate needs. A better understanding of mutual aid efforts in Sudan since 15 April may also help guide external aid actors in crises elsewhere with some of the same characteristics.
One important caveat, though. However remarkable and impressive the mutual aid and locally led efforts described here are, this piece does not suggest that such efforts can substitute for the basic responsibilities of the Sudanese government, the warring parties, international diplomatic actors and institutional aid actors mandated to serve and protect civilians caught in the crossfire and crosshairs of the SAF, the RSF and other armed groups and militias. Nor should this article be understood to suggest that these efforts, impressive and important as they are, have been able to prevent terrible loss of life, displacement, and flight across borders, along with the massive destruction of private and public property and infrastructure.
That caveat aside, it remains important to try to understand and learn from what Sudanese citizens have achieved together, often against the odds and in the absence of any other support. Even if many external aid actors continue to underestimate these voluntary mutual aid responses, it is crucial to showcase and celebrate a Sudan so radically different to the one manifested by the warring parties – a Sudan full of compassion, solidarity and humanity.
We are a volunteering group from the residents of Khartoum 2 who decided to help evacuating families from the area of Khartoum 2, where it became very dangerous.
Tweet, 22 April 2023, @K1K2Committee
A diversity of actors
Who are the important aid givers in Sudan today? Before 15 April, a standard answer to that question would probably have been (with some variation in emphasis depending on who you asked): local, national, and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and agencies supported by international donors.
The answer to the same question today will look more like this (in no priority order):
- The hundreds of thousands of citizens undertaking or contributing to individual and sporadic acts of mutual aid including hosting in their own homes a very large number of the 4.4 million people (at time of writing) displaced within Sudan.
- Grassroots Neighbourhood Committees and Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) – along with other organised grassroots groups (youth, faith, women’s groups, elders/traditional leaders, kinship groups) across Sudan.
- Medical and other professional and support staff at crucial institutions and infrastructure (health, power, water, phone/internet), journalists and citizen journalists, lawyers, drivers, traders – individually and through professional associations.
- Local and national NGOs along with remaining staff of international aid actors.
- Diaspora groups supporting aid efforts and leading crowdfunding and crowdsourcing.
- International agencies (international NGOs, United Nations (UN) agencies, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), donor representatives).
The magnitude of the threats and challenges to ordinary Sudanese people in many parts of the country is difficult to grasp. Direct threats from targeted killing and violence (including rape and other forms of gender-based violence) as well as more random violence, looting, artillery strikes and gunfire, grenades and air strikes. The breakdown of electricity, water, phone and internet connections, banking (digital and physical). The lack of food (or safe access to it, or money to buy it), essential medicine and medical supplies. Severely restricted access to doctors, nurses, midwifes, clinics and hospitals. Life-threatening disruption to the movement of people and goods, government-run services, and the absence of any reliable official information, for instance on safe corridors for the millions who have fled. The list of threats and challenges seems endless.
Guys – does anyone know what could be done if you come across a grenade in Sudan? My family found a grenade inside the house gate that hasn’t gone off yet and they don’t know what to do about it.
Tweet, 24 April 2023, @380rel
Equally, trying to list the organised and spontaneous attempts by ordinary Sudanese to address or mitigate just some of these threats and challenges can only offer a glimpse of a reality too complex to capture. Providing, at great risk, essentials to children and adults caught up for days, weeks and months in intense fighting, as well as in shorter or more protracted displacement. Evacuation of individuals and groups where this has been possible. Crowdsourcing and making essential medicine and medical supplies available within isolated localities or over greater distances. Rescuing the sick and the wounded and transporting them to the few functioning hospitals or to improvised clinics where medical staff try to continue their work. Communities supporting the technicians who have struggled for months to restore and maintain limited power, water and phone and internet access.
Stopped at a pharmacy earlier for some meds, banking app was down when I came to pay. Several people also couldn’t pay. The pharmacist refused to take back meds from customers, wrote acc number + amount on their bags to pay when service is back. Humanity at its best
Tweet, 3 July 2023, @hiba_morgan
The multitude of individual acts of kindness defies any attempt at quantification. As with much of the mutual aid seen globally during the Covid-19 pandemic, gathering examples from informants on the ground, alongside social and mainstream media, can only provide anecdotal evidence of acts of basic humanity and solidarity. But the sheer amount of anecdotal evidence of collective and individual acts of solidarity and assistance suggests that the scale of these efforts has easily surpassed institutional humanitarian aid efforts – at least during the first months of the crisis. During those first months, local-level efforts received next to no funding from the established humanitarian system. Instead, donors largely channelled their funding towards conventional international agencies.
Crowdsourcing knowledge and resources have been key to many of these efforts. Using WhatsApp, Twitter/X, Facebook/Messenger, YouTube and Instagram – along with word of mouth – people share information on everything from contacts to local Resistance Committees and ERRs, options for accessing and transferring money internally and from abroad, coordinating small (individuals and families) or larger-scale flight, intelligence on safe and unsafe roads, contacts to reliable drivers and buses, prices of bus tickets, visas or the ‘facilitation money’ needed to cross borders, crowd searching for missing persons, the availability of rape kits, advice on dealing with unexploded ordnance, contacts for safer passage abroad for members of Sudan’s LGBTQIA+ communities, clinics and hospitals still functioning, or sharing tips on fuel and spare parts, information on markets, water points and pharmacies that remain open.
ALMEES will organize free buses from Khartoum to Egypt for the queer community.
Tweet, 15 May 2023, @mujj_ja
Long as this list is, it only captures some tip-of-the-iceberg examples of responses dealing with immediate physical and medical challenges and threats. Add to that attempts to negotiate local truces, ceasefires and safe corridors by local activists, faith, and other civic leaders in their respective localities – be that in a neighbourhood, a larger city like El Fasher or Nyala or in contested parts of South Kordofan. These may often be temporary, often short-lived efforts, but in some cases are solid enough to maintain relative peace in larger towns and areas for weeks and sometimes months. In South Kordofan, years of local-level conflict transformation efforts helped maintain safe passage for several months, allowing about 150,000 individuals to move across frontlines and to relative safety in the Nuba Mountains. Efforts to secure such geographically limited truces or safe zones and corridors have been led by small groups of traditional leaders, appointed officials, local NGO workers, faith leaders, youth and other activists. A common feature is the way individuals and groups have made the most of existing connections based on family, personal, commercial, political, ethnic or religious ties to appeal to common interests – but also to more ‘selfish’ and individual benefits, such as continued trade and other commercial interests. Another feature shared by such efforts seems to be that they all held up for a while (weeks, months) before eventually succumbing to the mounting polarisation and aggression of the warring parties.
Another set of actions also warrants attention: speaking out against the war and the atrocities being committed. Crowdsourcing information, contacts and aligning core messages have been crucial as activists across Sudan have called attention to the most atrocious actions and verbal or written statements by the warring sides. Using WhatsApp groups, activists inside and outside Sudan work together in real time to build a consistent, decentralised, and iterative advocacy campaign directed internally and externally: calling for an end to the war, respect for civilian life and infrastructure, humanitarian access and increased aid through local actors. As diplomatic talks in Jeddah and other regional capitals got under way, these voices increasingly warned international actors of the risk of bestowing credibility and even more power on the very men causing the current havoc, destruction, and killings – while further disempowering and silencing the civilian actors trying to provide help and assistance to people in need.
Apart from more traditional advocacy and political activities directed towards internal and external power-holders, Sudanese artists, inside and outside the country, are collaborating under banners such as ‘It’s been more than 40 days and Sunday never came’, using their creativity, skill, talent and networks to share in music, painting and poetry their anger, loss and frustration – but also their longing and love of the homes and lives lost in the war.
Two things Sudanese people -not even a war- can stop from making: music and protests A rehearsal by a group of musicians, some who fled Khartoum together with local artists in Madani.
Tweet, 20 August 2023, @ahmadz249
Box 1: Types of mutual aid responses
• Crowdsourcing real-time updated information on food, water and other essentials (location-specific access and availability).
• Groups of volunteers, individuals and families providing food, water and basic shelter to hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people on the move or caught up in fighting – from individuals and families sharing what they have to semi-organised groups (ERRs, faith groups, professionals, youth, traditional leaders, private sector) supporting improvised IDP and refugee centres (schools, mosques, churches), over weeks and months.
• Using crowdsourcing and direct networks/structures to provide basic medical assistance including securing access and supplies to hospitals and improvised clinics. Outreach with medical assistance (doctors, health workers, nurses, midwives, psychologists) to populations cut off from accessing services, either direct (visits by health professionals) or remote (phone/internet consultations).
• Sharing essential medicine and advice on availability via social media including providing information on contraception and rape kits.
• Volunteers supporting technicians to help restore and maintain water, power and phone/internet services.
• Local peace committees and leaders, elders and kinship networks working to secure local truces and/or establish safe passage through conflict lines for people fleeing – often short-term, but in some cases for longer periods.
• Crowdsourcing/sharing information (safety, contacts, prices) on routes out of conflict areas.
• Crowdsourcing/sharing information (safety, contacts, prices) on border and frontline crossing – including warnings about unsafe roads, SAF and RSF checkpoints, etc.
• Using social media and ERR contacts to seek help to evacuate or get essential supplies to particularly vulnerable individuals and groups.
• Searching for missing individuals (the ‘disappeared’, arrested, unlawfully detained, dead) and publicly appealing for their release.
• Using social media, digital networks and diaspora groups to appeal for ceasefires, safe passage and aid – and the need for civilian voices at the table when international actors (diplomats and humanitarians) engage conflict parties in negotiations.
• Using social media and direct contacts to inform journalists and opinion-makers inside and outside Sudan of important messages, and equally to alert correspondents, researchers and opinion-makers to events as they unfold.
• Using social media to crowdsource and share information on availability of shelter, water and food in general or being provided by volunteer groups in conflict-affected areas, and areas people are fleeing towards.
• Crowdsourcing information/awareness on unexploded ordnance.
• Evacuation support to members of Sudan’s queer community, suggesting safe transport options for those with valid passports along with safe contacts in Egypt.
• Crowdfunding in close cooperation with diaspora groups.
Do you have your own observations and examples? Please share with the authors of this article.
100,001 responses – from Dongola to Nyala
‘Traditional’ humanitarian actors devote sizeable resources to measuring and reporting on the reach and impact of their activities. This is part of ongoing learning from experience and many donors expect it and pay for it. When thousands of volunteers are forced by circumstances to undertake responses based almost entirely on their own time, effort and resources, there are no centralised systems and dedicated staff on standby to capture the reach and impact of this voluntary and mutual aid. Nor was this a first priority for these volunteers and activists when balanced against using precious resources for direct responses and immediate action.
IT IS INSANE THAT WE HAVE TO ORGANIZE A MASS EVACUATION OVER TWITTER IT IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY THAT PEOPLES LIVES DEPEND ON CYBER VOLUNTEERS!!!!!!! THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
Tweet, 21 April 2023, @BSonblast
An interesting aside – to date, none of the traditional humanitarian coordination and tracking entities have taken it upon themselves to systematically track these efforts and showcase their importance. The online updates of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and ACAPS occasionally mention local partners and NGOs; there has been reference to the fact that the vast majority of displaced are living with relatives and host communities; and there have been a few direct references to the work of ERRs/Resistance and Neighbourhood committees. But none of these short entries attempt to describe these efforts in any detail, despite their scale, and certainly not on a par with the detailed descriptions of the actions of traditional and mostly external humanitarian actors, and the constraints they face. The mainstream media, The New Humanitarian, Shabaka or the ERR Coordination Unit provide more depth and insight than anything OCHA and ACAPS have so far delivered.
In addition to more traditional Sudanese civil society and private sector structures, a loosely connected network of ERRs has emerged across much of Sudan. Many share a close affiliation with the Resistance Committees so instrumental in toppling Omar al Bashir in April 2020, and the ongoing country-wide non-violent campaign against the military regime.
Box 2: What is an Emergency Response Room (ERR) – in their own words
‘The Khartoum State Emergency Response Rooms, through work in the hospitals, neighborhood clinics, communal soup kitchens, psychosocial Women Response Room programs and evacuation assistance, have helped alleviate some of the burdens on those who decided to stay in the Capital despite the ongoing war and those who needed to leave. The ERRs strive to provide daily meals for families and assist pregnant women and those with chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. A core role for the ERRs is to ensure the continued availability of basic services especially water and electricity by providing logistical support to the workers.
‘Our ability to run daily communal soup kitchens and neighborhood clinics has increased the community’s participation in mutual aid. The whole neighborhood is involved with working in the clinic, kitchen, clean ups, maintaining services or neighborhood protection. It is amazing the amount of thoughts and dreams that we hear every day in the communal soup kitchens and around the neighborhood. The ease of discussions, even controversial issues like racism and women’s rights. It is beautiful to see the involvement of people who did not think that they could be part of any mainstream discussions as they were always outsiders due to class or their ethnicity. The most important thing is that we all have the same voice and interest in hearing the ideas of others and making room and tolerance for our differences.’
Source: Khartoum State ERR’s First Fund Narrative Report (July 2023)
ERRs or other grassroots and voluntary groups have been set up in towns and cities across Sudan. In Greater Khartoum, close to 70 ERRs were reported to be operational by August 2023 – several with further specialised offices and units. Speaking from Khartoum, Dr Adam Mudawi of the Sudan Development Organisation (SUDO) explains: ‘Such Emergency Response Rooms are there whenever there is a need. In every state and city across Sudan where there is need – there is a Response Room. Also, in Darfur. Some of them are more permanent and stable, some are becoming smaller like in the parts of Khartoum where so many have fled – or in Darfur where many Response Rooms are forced to move because of the fighting’.
Each ERR is unique, none accepts hierarchical structures and each one responds in its own way as needs and opportunities evolve and as their operational environment changes. As such, the examples that follow serve as illustrations, but must be read as anecdotal and not necessarily representative of every ERR.
In a city south of Khartoum hosting a large number of displaced people, a group of volunteers supports 35 displaced families (315 individuals) living in a school. The group’s objectives are articulated as: ‘provide life-saving food, and address the complex needs including protection, safety, inclusiveness, and social cohesion for the internally displaced people’. Volunteers are between 19 and 33 years of age and their collaboration is based on being part of a local Resistance Committee since 2019.
In the Juref West neighbourhood of Khartoum, a local Women Response Room runs activities for women and children centred around a communal soup kitchen. Apart from organising for collective meals (soup kitchen) based on voluntary contributions, groups host activities for children aimed at countering the trauma inflicted by the ongoing fighting in or around the neighbourhood –compounded by total state collapse and, with it, the closure of kindergartens and schools. Activities for children include art sessions, games and farming. Around these activities deeper discussions around trauma, loss, racism, hopes, and fears are taking place with the children and their mothers.
Often working in close collaboration with the ERRs, efforts by doctors, nurses, midwives and other medical staff have been crucial in keeping some minimal health services running, even in the worst-hit parts of Sudan. While many health professionals have fled the country or been displaced, a large number continue to work – even if many have been forced to move to different and safer locations. Like many of their colleagues in the ERRs, health professionals are working under extremely challenging and dangerous conditions, because of the general dangers of fighting but also due to direct threats and targeted killings and other violence by armed parties. Despite this, thousands of patients have received treatment. Doctors, nurses, midwives, mental trauma councillors and psychologists (in-country and from abroad) are also volunteering their time to support individuals remotely via phone and internet.
Water is crucial in a conflict zone with many wounded and with temperatures for much of the year hovering around 40°C during the day and 30°C at night. An important role played by ERR volunteers, and collaborating NGOs, is to help technicians access, repair and maintain crucial infrastructure such as water plants and distribution systems. Volunteers and local businesspeople source spare parts as well as organising community food contributions so technicians can continue working despite the collapse of the government. In Greater Khartoum these efforts have helped restore water infrastructure, power grids and phone and internet installations. Such efforts have supported probably hundreds of thousands of people with lifesaving and life-sustaining services and supplies. Most of these professionals (doctors, nurses, midwives, technicians) have not received regular salaries for several months. Most government and state salary payments stopped in April, and many private sector employees lost their salaries in May or June. Employees with many NGOs have also gone without pay.
Traders, transporters and vendors have also played a crucial role, even if their efforts do not qualify as mutual aid. Shop owners, vegetable vendors at their stalls or on brightly coloured tuk-tuks about town, young people leading donkey carts with water tanks, drivers and helpers trucking flour, sugar and soap by the ton – all put themselves at risk navigating the fighting, roadblocks, random violence and theft to bring essential goods to people. That said, some traders and private businesspeople have used shortages and broken supply lines to increase prices dramatically and/or withhold goods and services from the market, hoping to gain from further price hikes in weeks or months to come.
Revolution – coup – corona – war. The Sudanese vegetable seller does not stop.
Tweet, 18 April 2023, @Sudan_tweet & video clip
Coordinating a thousand initiatives?
Coordinating such a spontaneous and ever-evolving multitude of responses will always be difficult. Indeed, doing so is partly paradoxical to the very nature of such efforts – and for some possibly even counterproductive. Many of these responses are opportunistic, short-lived and spontaneous – and should be appreciated and valued as such. Professional humanitarians need to understand that, for an action to matter and possibly even save lives, it does not need to be planned, monitored or evaluated – or conform to professional standards and compliance regulations.
Still, relying on trusted personal networks (many established through years of civilian protest against various expressions of military rule) and using a mix of digital connectivity and face-to-face contacts, key NGO and mutual aid responders operating within the same physical localities have repeatedly managed to coordinate complicated tasks such as sourcing knowledge, spare parts, fuel and transport, and dodging roadblocks and fighting, in order to restore water supplies, or to support health professionals to keep basic services running. Equally, coordination is taking place to try to ensure rudimentary support to IDPs across the country. Collaboration between friends and colleagues locally, nationally, and abroad has ensured basic contacts and dialogue and knowledge sharing between ERRs, local NGOs and civil society groups (faith, youth and women’s groups, diaspora) as well as a few international aid actors. With a foot both inside and outside Sudan, initiatives such as the Khartoum ERR coordination unit and Shabaka are connecting local aid actors, diaspora groups and international actors. Other local NGOs, community-based organisations, ERRs and mutual aid volunteers coordinate directly among themselves, as well as sharing assessments, gap analysis and funding opportunities with international actors.
Coordination is complicated by the fact that local and national entities, including what’s left of the government Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC), and an emerging entity for areas controlled by the RSF, increasingly try to control, manipulate, harass or otherwise obstruct the work of local voluntary aid initiatives. Targeted killing and harassment of mutual aid activists, doctors and other volunteers by the warring parties have also forced coordination to operate partly underground. Emerging locally led coordination efforts are also not helped by the fact that some leading international actors within coordination, funding and diplomacy are, at least for now, holding back their support.
Efforts by local, national and international NGOs and agencies
Alongside, and in some cases working in close cooperation with, voluntary and mutual aid, staff of many Sudanese NGOs have continued to provide assistance and services. This is despite the fact that since April at least 19 humanitarian workers have been killed, and a very large number of warehouses, cars and offices have been looted, confiscated or destroyed by the warring parties. In some cases, Sudanese and some international NGOs and agencies have been able to continue activities originally supported by international donors before 15 April, but now with the flexibility to meet needs in response to fluctuations in fighting, access and displacement patterns. Some international NGOs and UN agencies have supported national staff members where they have been able to continue their efforts, while most expatriate staff left the country or were evacuated to the relative safety of Port Sudan. From relatively early in the response, a limited number of traditional humanitarian actors have explored and, in some cases, found ways to support ERRs and other voluntary efforts. Traditional aid efforts by national and international humanitarian actors also remain crucial and have been gradually expanding since the early weeks and months of the crisis, but assessing the impact of international assistance is beyond the scope of this article.
Crowdfunding and remittances
Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are a lifeline for many conflict-affected people in Sudan, and have provided a platform for unity, support and resilience. While crowdsourcing quickly emerged as a powerful tool for people within Sudan, Sudanese in the diaspora took to collective and individual crowdfunding to channel support to those in need back home. They also found help and some solace in the virtual communities that shared vital information on ways to get money to groups and individuals.
A survey of crowdfunding since 15 April shows a multitude of initiatives, ranging from small-scale fundraising for individuals and specific families (typically in the range of $2,000–$20,000) to more ambitious and sustained attempts to raise funds, for instance for public emergency health services. Groups of Sudanese doctors in the diaspora and NGOs in the United States, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere have fundraised more than $100,000 in support of lifesaving work in Sudan over recent months.
What largely escapes documentation are the attempts by many Sudanese internally and abroad to send money to friends and family caught up in the fighting, violence and displacement. The authors of this piece have yet to come across a Sudanese abroad who has not tried to do so. Many non-Sudanese with personal or professional connections have done the same. All have been frustrated by the breakdown of large parts of the banking system not least in Greater Khartoum and much of Darfur. Even so, an unknown but likely significant amount has made its way to people in need through personal networks, hawala systems, bank branches and other money transfer and mobile money services such as the widespread Sudanese banking app BANKAK.
A 2022 analysis by the World Bank estimated that remittances made up 2.9% of Sudan’s gross domestic product (GDP) ($51.66 billion, or about $1.5 billion ). As a reference, the current UN in-country appeal for Sudan is for $2.6 billion. By late September, only $814.5 million had been committed by donors .
‘This is our moment’
Judging by exchanges with individuals involved, an increasing number of external actors are seeking ways to support the work of both national and local NGOs, ERRs and other mutual aid efforts. This is obviously a welcome development at a time when needs are growing fast as the crisis continues to deepen, services by national and local authorities remain largely non-existent and individuals, families and communities are exhausting their own resources.
As more external actors look for ways to get involved and collaborate, especially with ERRs and similar mutual aid efforts, they will need to understand and embrace some of the characteristics of the mutual aid efforts if they are to support, rather than undermine or destroy, the strengths of the work done so far by volunteers. Some suggested characteristics of mutual aid, detailed below, build on its foundations of legitimacy, ownership and trust:
Crowdsourcing and legitimacy
- Importance of crowdsourcing and sharing information on resources, safety, transport, missing individuals, vulnerable groups, campaign messaging, etc.
- Importance of volunteers (individuals, families, groups including kinship structures) mobilising and sharing resources (food, water and NFIs).
- Importance of professional networks and individuals (supported by NGOs and volunteers) stepping in to keep essential services running (medical, water, power).
Given the widespread and deep distrust of the SAF, the RSF and structures associated with them, the fact that voluntary mutual aid is coming from actors independent from the conflict parties is crucial to its legitimacy in the eyes of most Sudanese. What can external actors (UN, international NGOs, etc.), with their current and past associations with the HAC (and thus national security structures), do to avoid eroding or even ruining the legitimacy and credibility of future responses?
Crowdfunding and ownership
- Opportunistic but intense collaboration on resource mobilisation between pre-established national/local actors (individuals, families, groups including faith and kinship structures, private sector), voluntary activist networks (RC /ERRs) and diaspora groups.
- Crowdfunding money and other resources domestically and internationally – at an individual level (family/friends/neighbours) as well as at collective levels and often in collaboration with local and/or national private sector actors.
What happens to the current sense of ownership of the response by volunteers themselves if more external funding becomes available – and with that demands for compliance with established standards, policies? What can be done to prevent erosion of ownership in such a situation?
Resistance humanitarians and trust
- A section of volunteers sees mutual aid efforts as acts of necessity, humanity, and solidarity – but also as a natural extension of the political struggle (revolution) that emerged in 2018/2019. A loosely shaped vision of another and better Sudan, alongside years of protest in the face of deadly suppression, provide much of the trust and social glue tying individual groups and activists together in an organic, ever-changing yet responsive collaboration and ad hoc coordination. Hugo Slim’s piece on humanitarian resistance reflects on similar themes in other contexts such as Myanmar and Ukraine.
- In contrast to institutional aid actors, many of the volunteer groups operate with extremely limited resources but have mastered the art of making the most of what they do have, informed and guided by instant real-time situation analysis paired with ongoing pragmatic (informal) needs and opportunities assessments.
- These groups have demonstrated an impressive ability to sense, read, understand and make the most of zones of access and dangers across the country and within limited geographic localities in a context shaped by the degree of active combat and the behaviour/misbehaviour of de facto power-holders.
- Coordination of spontaneous mutual aid responses remains crucial at the most local level but is difficult and may be counterproductive if imposed from above and driven by outside actors with different understandings, needs and priorities.
What, within their own practice, rules and regulations, do external actors need to change in order to support entities such as ERRs on their own terms – and thus avoid undermining the crucial but fragile elements of trust and cohesion so essential for the current mutual aid responders?
The Local2Global Protection (L2GP) initiative has worked with collaborators across the world to develop practical ways for international and national NGOs to support mutual aid groups in ways which are effective, in keeping with humanitarian standards – and that still safeguard the autonomy and the spontaneous and voluntary basis of mutual aid. L2GP calls this way of working ‘supporting community led response’ (sclr). Sclr is already in use in several localities across Sudan where it is also referred to as ‘rushash’ (water sprinkled to germinate seeds). Based on more than 10 years of practical experience with sclr, L2GP has extracted 10 basic principles for engaging with informal group initiatives and other forms of mutual aid in many different contexts. These principles are listed in Box 3, and the approach is described in detail here.
Box 3: Guiding principles of survivor and community led crisis responses (sclr)
1. Communities are the first and last responders to crisis.
2. How external actors engage with people in crisis affects how they behave and respond.
3. All communities have rich knowledge, skills and insights to respond to crisis and long-term vulnerabilities.
4. Given the chance, communities respond to crises holistically, unconstrained by humanitarian and development divides, and looking to long-term resilience.
5. Locally led response can be much faster and more cost-efficient than conventional aid or humanitarian interventions.
6. Strengthening psychosocial wellbeing is crucial to recovery.
7. Crisis response is strengthened when women and other marginalised groups are also given a chance to lead.
8. Local agency and accountability require local ownership and mutual trust.
9. Innovation and learning require a safe-to-fail environment.
10. Social connection and cohesion strengthen crisis response and resilience.
Mutual aid and other locally led efforts have delivered crucial lifesaving help to hundreds of thousands of people in Sudan in the days, weeks and months following 15 April 2023, and looks set to continue to do so in the months to come. Even so, needs have constantly and vastly outstripped these efforts – impressive as they are. In the face of the worsening crisis in Sudan, mutual aid and other local efforts are crucial and desperately need more support. At the same time, mutual aid must not be seen as a substitute for continuing to push for large-scale responses by a multitude of actors – including conventional aid actors.
We’ll never know exactly how many people locally led aid has reached. We do know that these last months have demonstrated that such efforts can work across a wide range of needs, across a very large country and at impressive speed and scale, at a time when the reach and impact of conventional humanitarian aid has been greatly reduced.
A crucial test remains – a test for the humanitarian establishment, rather than the local mutual aid responders in Sudan. Are the more forward-looking parts of the established humanitarian system capable of reinventing themselves? Are they able and willing to build their own capacities in order to work in ways that genuinely support, respect and increase the impact and leadership of the true ‘first responders’ in Sudan – and not inadvertently hamper or destroy it in the process?
Around June, some external aid actors began exploring ways to support mutual aid actors such as the ERRs. Hajooj Kuka, spokesperson with a coordination unit for some of the ERRs in Greater Khartoum, explains that the unit has received promises and pledges of close to $2 million from international humanitarian actors. By late September, only a little under $200,000 of this had been received. Such unfulfilled promises are in some ways worse than promises not being made at all. Hajooj Kuka explains: ‘We started planning responses which then never materialised. As a result, some volunteers are beginning to give up.’
Sudanese volunteers and other ‘first responders’ are challenging established humanitarians to make 5% of humanitarian funding for Sudan available to mutual aid. By meeting this challenge, the more forward-looking parts of the humanitarian establishment would, in deeds and not just words, recognise the impressive and almost unimaginable results Sudanese volunteers and activists have achieved so far. In doing so, they will also – led by the experiences of their Sudanese colleagues – be building the capacities, knowledge, mindset and approaches needed to respond more effectively in Sudan right now – and when facing similar humanitarian crises elsewhere in the future.
‘This is our job. All of us understand: this is our time. This is our moment. The Sudanese people need us. So we’ll not stop, we’ll not hide, we’ll not excuse ourselves.’
Dr Attiya Abdullah, Khartoum, speaking to BBC Radio 4 on 27 April 2023
Nils Carstensen is part of Local2Global Protection and an advisor to DanChurcAid. With a background in journalism, Nils has worked with humanitarian crisis response, including in Sudan, since the late 1980s. He is also an independent writer, filmmaker and photographer.
Lodia Sebit holds a BSc from Copenhagen Business School and a fervent passion for international development, and particularly solutions that help bridge cultural gaps. Lodia is based in the Netherlands and Denmark, and has South Sudanese heritage.
The Local to Global Protection (L2GP) initiative focus on documenting and supporting crisis affected communities’ and citizens’ own efforts to protect, survive and recover. L2GP is a semi-autonomous research and innovation unit co-hosted by DanChurchAid, ACT Church of Sweden and Christian Aid.
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