Sudan mutual aid groups face survival battle amid army abuse and US aid freeze

“They have no sources of income.”

Rawh Nasir

Freelance journalist and emergency response room volunteer

Malaz Emad

Freelance investigative journalist and podcaster

KAMPALA, Uganda and NAIROBI, Kenya

The US aid freeze is forcing mutual aid groups fighting famine in Sudan to halt their lifesaving work just as volunteers also grapple with increasing attacks against them by an emboldened army that is clawing back territory from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Local volunteers are the main lifeline for millions of people living in conflict-affected areas where international aid groups and UN agencies have struggled to consistently access over the course of the nearly two-year war.

Yet in the past few weeks hundreds of volunteer-run communal kitchens have shut down as a result of US President Donald Trump’s freezing of assistance by USAID, which accounted for a major chunk of the budget that mutual aid groups depend upon. 

At the same time, volunteers are also having to grapple with a new crackdown by the Sudanese army and allied militias, which are falsely accusing them of collaborating with RSF forces, and even writing their names on hit lists of people to be targeted.

“I have been contacted by intelligence agents that I will be arrested and sentenced to death on the charge of treason and collaboration with the RSF,” said Nafisa*, a volunteer in Khartoum, the capital, which the army is close to seizing after a long RSF occupation.

Nafisa said volunteers in the city – who had to communicate with the RSF, given they were in control – fear they will be killed once the army advances, and some have already started saying goodbye to their friends and families.

The war between the army and the RSF began in April 2023 and has produced the world’s largest displacement crisis, uprooting over 12 million, and the biggest hunger crisis. Famine has been detected in at least five areas, and is projected in five more by May. 

Volunteer solidarity networks – known as emergency response rooms – formed at the outset of the conflict. They are operated by thousands of neighbourhood-based activists, who make daily meals and keep services like power and water running.

Despite increased recognition for the groups – topped off by a Nobel Peace Prize nomination – volunteers have faced repeated abuse by the army and the RSF, as well as crippling underfunding that now threatens their very survival.

“They have no sources of income and we have lost contact with a large number due to their fear of using phones and moving in their areas,” said Ehsan Babiker, who works for NIDAA, a national NGO that partners with mutual aid groups.

Kitchens closed

In the first months of the war, emergency response rooms relied on the Sudanese diaspora and philanthropists for funding. But international aid groups – depending on USAID funding – gave more as the economic situation degraded for many Sudanese.

Trump announced his stop-work orders on 20 January, and while exemptions have been issued for some forms of emergency aid, they have been difficult to interpret and cumbersome to apply for – particularly amid the attempt to shut down USAID, which provided 44% of the $1.8 billion of humanitarian funding to Sudan last year.

Aid officials and more than a dozen volunteers from emergency response rooms interviewed for this story told The New Humanitarian that the groups have been severely impacted, and that the freeze has escalated the possibility of famine spreading beyond the areas it has already settled.

Babiker of NIDAA, which works as an intermediary between international aid groups and emergency response rooms, said hundreds of communal kitchens have gone out of service due to a lack of food supplies.

Babiker said her organisation has a major financial deficit, and that the volunteers it works with are struggling psychologically. “They receive many needs from citizens and they are currently unable to meet them,” she said.

Hind Al Tayef, who works for the media office of an emergency response room in the East Nile district of Khartoum, said her group doesn’t have enough funds to purchase gasoline to operate a water pump, and has closed almost all of its 300 kitchens.

Hannen, a volunteer who does coordination work for the emergency response rooms, said 111 kitchens have been shut in her area of Jabal Awliya, which is located south of Khartoum. She said civilians and volunteers there are “facing the risk of death”.

Haneen said volunteers are feeling dejected because they cannot help people, and because their painstaking efforts to build up community resilience by creating safe spaces for women and education centres for children are also imperilled.

The situation is equally dire for emergency response rooms in Darfur – which is the traditional stronghold of the RSF – several volunteers from the western region told The New Humanitarian.

The number of communal kitchens operating in East Darfur state, for example, has dropped from 48 to just two, and they are offering only one meal a day, said Noon, a volunteer coordinator from a local emergency response room there.

Volunteers said they are trying to fundraise to plug the gaps. Some are running online crowdfunding campaigns on Facebook, while others hope that a dedicated website – the Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition – can bring in more public support.

Volunteers said they are also speaking with new institutional donors, including Gulf states and regional organisations, as well as asking their established international NGO partners for more support.

“We have potential international NGO donors who promised to work on this aid gap, but due to their bureaucracy, we did not receive anything yet,” said Hannen, the volunteer from Jabal Awliya.

Given what has passed, Omer, an activist and volunteer in Al-Hasahisa, a town in Gezira state, which is southeast of Khartoum, said the emergency response rooms are having to rethink the model of providing emergency aid.

He said his group is discussing setting up sustainable, agricultural income-generating projects to reduce its reliance on donor-dependent initiatives like the community kitchens.

Army crackdown

Volunteers said the US freeze has come at an especially dangerous time, as the emergency response rooms face widespread reprisals from the army and allied militias (for more on RSF abuses against volunteers, read our past reporting).

The army has been advancing on multiple fronts over the past weeks, having broken a bruising siege on its Khartoum headquarters in January, and having also won back significant territory in other parts of central Sudan, including Gezira state.

Military control, however, has come at a cost, with volunteers viewed suspiciously by the army because they stayed while the RSF was in control, and because they embrace a discourse of democracy and freedom that the RSF also espouses, albeit insincerely.

“In the early days, there were random killings by the army under the pretext of people being collaborators with the RSF.”

Several volunteers described to The New Humanitarian receiving threatening phone calls and messages – to their WhatsApp and Facebook accounts – from army intelligence officers and pro-army militias.

Others described army officials drawing up lists of people who they spuriously accuse of being enemy collaborators – many of them volunteers or people of ethnic minorities from peripheral parts of Sudan.

These hit lists have been made public in some Facebook groups, and have been used by army-aligned militias to arrest, torture, and kill scores of perceived opponents when they gain control of new areas.

While volunteers in Khartoum said they have received death threats as the army advances, those from areas of central Sudan recently retaken by the military described facing an array of abuses.

Omer, the activist and volunteer from Al-Hasahisa, said there was a period of “indiscriminate violence” carried out by the army following its recapture of Wad Madani, the capital of Gezira, in January.

“In the early days, there were random killings by the army under the pretext of people being collaborators with the RSF,” Omer said, explaining that emergency response room volunteers were among those targeted.

Omer said the killings stopped after pressure from civil society, but arbitrary arrests continue. “The security situation is now more stable, and there are no more assassinations, but there are still arrests of suspected collaborators,” he said.

Profiling

Salma, a volunteer from Gezira, said she was verbally harassed by army intelligence officials at a checkpoint while travelling back to Wad Madani after the RSF was pushed out of the city.

Salma said she was profiled by the soldiers because her national identity card was issued in Khartoum’s East Nile district, which has been an RSF stronghold throughout the war.

Despite the experience, Salma said she is continuing to volunteer in her village near Wad Madani. “I decided to carry on working at the neighbouring health centre, because the people need us and we must help the sick and hungry children,” she said.

“Although I am a Sudanese citizen by descent, I was imprisoned and subjected to insults and violence without being brought to trial.”

When the army took over Wad Madani, they also arrested a volunteer who had previously endured three months of detention by the RSF, according to his mother and brother.

They said military intelligence admitted they have no evidence against their loved one but continue to detain him because his identification card was issued in a place held by the RSF for around 18 months.

“He has no connection to either the RSF or the army,” said the mother. “He is an ambitious young man who selflessly helps others and works to serve the community without expecting anything in return.”

Similar cases of profiling have even taken place in the eastern city Port Sudan, the de facto capital in lieu of Khartoum, and a city that the army has fully controlled throughout the war.

Ibrahim, a volunteer for an initiative providing meals for displaced people in Port Sudan, said he was detained for more than a month last year because he has relatives from East African states where a few nationals have joined the RSF as mercenaries.

“Although I am a Sudanese citizen by descent, I was imprisoned and subjected to insults and violence without being brought to trial,” Ibrahim said. “Even now, after my release, I receive threats from security forces in public places or over the phone”.

Khalid, an activist and volunteer from Port Sudan who was recently detained and given an overseas travel ban for his anti-war efforts, said it isn’t just emergency response rooms that are in the army’s crosshairs. 

“The security situation is unstable, with heightened security measures at the entrances to the city and state,” Khalid said. “Youth are being targeted; not only volunteers but any young people who are active and working to help others.”

*The names of volunteers who discuss security issues in this article have been changed given the risks they face.

Rawh Nasir reported from Kampala, and Malaz Emad from Nairobi. Edited by Philip Kleinfeld.

Source The New Humanitarian.