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Sudan’s conflict has created an immense humanitarian crisis, while also exposing the limits of formal response systems and the critical role of local actors. Across the country, community-led networks, civil society organisations, women-led groups, and diaspora actors have continued to provide essential support in extremely difficult conditions.

This brief brings together lessons from recent research and practice on Sudan’s humanitarian response. It highlights recurring patterns across the evidence: what is enabling locally led response, where major gaps remain, and what these lessons may mean for recovery, governance, and longer-term peacebuilding.

At a glance

Sources reviewed: 10 reports, articles, and essays
Geographic focus: Sudan
Date period: between November 2021 and July 2026
Main themes: localisation, community-led humanitarian response, financing, governance, peacebuilding, protection, gender equality, food security, displacement, and resilience

Brief overview

Sudan faces a catastrophic humanitarian and governance crisis following the April 2023 outbreak of conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces. Nearly three years into the war, approximately 150,000 people have died, over 12 million are displaced, and more than 30 million require humanitarian assistance. The country's GDP has contracted by over 42 percent, inflation exceeds 170 percent, and extreme poverty affects over 71 percent of the population. Two-thirds of hospitals are non-functional, 90 percent of schools are closed, and the entire country faces food crisis or emergency conditions, with famine declared in some displacement camps. Formal state institutions have collapsed across much of the country, leaving community-led structures as the primary humanitarian response. Emergency Response Rooms, women-led networks, civil society organisations, and diaspora actors have sustained essential services including healthcare, food distribution, education, and protection at a scale that formal humanitarian systems have struggled to match. However, these local responders face severe constraints including chronic underfunding, security threats, detention, and criminalisation. International humanitarian assistance remains far below the scale of need, with funding severely inadequate and aid concentrated in more accessible areas. Hunger is being deliberately used as a weapon by both warring parties, and humanitarian access is systematically obstructed. Recovery and peacebuilding efforts must address deep structural issues including centre-periphery inequalities, militarised governance, unresolved justice and accountability concerns, and the need to strengthen local leadership and community-based reconciliation rather than relying solely on elite-level political settlements.

Insights

The most important insights and observations.

• Sudan faces the world's largest displacement crisis with over 12 million internally displaced, nearly 13 million forcibly displaced including 3.7 million to neighbouring countries, catastrophic food insecurity affecting 25.6 million people, and two-thirds of hospitals non-functional, creating an unprecedented humanitarian emergency that remains severely underfunded.
• Localisation requires genuine power-sharing and direct funding to local organisations rather than subcontracting implementation to local actors, with accountability systems adapted to community-led organisations, flexible funding mechanisms, and protection for local responders facing security threats and criminalisation.
• Community-led humanitarian networks including Emergency Response Rooms, women-led organisations, and diaspora actors have become the backbone of Sudan's humanitarian response, delivering healthcare, food, education, and protection where formal systems have collapsed, yet receive only a small proportion of humanitarian funding despite their frontline role.
• Humanitarian response and peacebuilding must shift from elite-focused political settlements to community-level engagement, addressing local grievances, trauma, justice needs, and supporting grassroots conflict-management mechanisms and women-led peacebuilding initiatives that have demonstrated effectiveness in building trust and social cohesion.

Patterns & Trends

Recurring patterns across the evidence, including repeated challenges, common themes, and emerging opportunities.

• Recurring pattern of centralised governance and resource concentration in capital cities while peripheral and devastated regions receive minimal reconstruction support, creating islands of development in seas of abandonment and driving internal displacement and resource conflicts.
• Systematic obstruction of humanitarian access and deliberate use of hunger as a weapon by warring parties, combined with overly risk-averse humanitarian responses that reduce presence and capacity when security constraints should be actively analysed and challenged rather than accepted as fixed barriers.
• Repeated pattern of international humanitarian systems failing to adequately fund and support local responders despite evidence that community-led organisations deliver services more effectively, with local actors receiving only a small share of humanitarian funding while depending heavily on diaspora support and local donors.
• Consistent disconnect between elite-level peace agreements and political settlements versus community-level needs for justice, reconciliation, trauma healing, and addressing root causes of conflict, resulting in repeated relapse into violence when agreements ignore local grievances and social dynamics.

Knowledge gaps

Areas where the available evidence is limited, incomplete, or where further learning is needed.

• Long-term medical, behavioural, and social consequences of conflict for children are insufficiently understood without sustained longitudinal research, limiting the ability to design appropriate recovery and support programmes.
• Evidence on the effectiveness and impact of locally led humanitarian responses remains limited, making it harder to demonstrate their contribution, target support effectively, and inform humanitarian decision-making in other conflict settings.

Potential actions

Suggested actions and next steps.

• Establish genuine partnerships between government, local organisations, diaspora networks, UN agencies, and international organisations with clearly defined roles and coordinated resources, recognising diaspora actors as important partners in crisis response and longer-term recovery.
• Redirect humanitarian funding to flow more directly to local and community-led organisations including Emergency Response Rooms, women-led networks, and civil society groups, with flexible funding mechanisms, reduced compliance burdens adapted to grassroots organisations, and direct support for volunteer safety and psychological wellbeing alongside programme activities.
• Link reconstruction funding to measurable progress in outlying areas outside Khartoum through fixed percentage allocations, independent monitoring by local civil society, and conditional funding based on verified improvements in service delivery in marginalised states to address centre-periphery inequalities.
• Prioritise community-level peacebuilding, justice, and reconciliation processes alongside elite-level political settlements, including support for women-led peace initiatives, grassroots conflict-management mechanisms, youth engagement in reconstruction and political dialogue, and survivor-centred transitional justice approaches.

Comparisons

Comparisons and contrasts found in sources between this topic and other connected topics.

• Ebola outbreak response lessons from Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda emphasise the importance of recognising local clinicians and communities as central knowledge producers and strengthening African-led scientific systems, which aligns with Sudan's need to invest in local health system resilience and diaspora expertise rather than relying solely on international deployment.
• Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms and community-led humanitarian networks demonstrate similar effectiveness to local response structures documented in Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo contexts, suggesting that supporting grassroots organisations rather than bypassing them through international deployment is a consistent lesson across Central and East Africa.
• Sudan's experience with localisation challenges mirrors broader patterns in humanitarian response across regions, where local organisations receive disproportionately small funding shares despite delivering frontline services, indicating a systemic issue in how international humanitarian systems allocate resources and recognise local capacity.
• Sudan's governance and peacebuilding challenges reflect broader Central and East African patterns where elite-focused political settlements fail to address local grievances and community-level conflict drivers, requiring integration of grassroots peacebuilding mechanisms and local leadership into formal peace processes.
  

Sources

• Jeffrey Goldhagen, Safa E. Elkrail & Ashraf Affan - Responding to the Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan, BMJ Paediatrics Open (2024).
• Majd A. Alsoukhni et al. - Public Health in Sudan: Priorities, Challenges, and Pathways to Resilience in Crisis, Frontiers in Public Health (2025).
• Alexander Charles Campbell, Rania M. H. Baleela, William Mude & Suad Sulaiman - Innovation in Health and Humanitarian Aid: Lessons from Sudan, The Lancet (2025).
• Hamid H. Hussien & Riham H. Ahmed - The Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan: Multifaceted Impacts of Armed Conflict on Health, Education, and Displacement, Sociological Research and Innovation (2025).
• David Keen - Humanitarian Responses to Famine and War in Sudan, SSHAP / Institute of Development Studies (2024).
• Fawzi Ahmed Abdullah Slom - Rebuilding Governance After Conflict: Lessons from Sudan for Fragile States, Small Wars Journal (2026).
• Bashair Ahmed - When Communities Lead: Lessons from Sudan’s Humanitarian Crisis, Sussex Centre for Migration Research / Shabaka (2026).
• Staff Writer - Sudan’s Crisis: Leadership Lessons for Recovery, African Leadership Magazine (2026).
• Jok Madut Jok - Lessons in Failure: Peacebuilding in Sudan/South Sudan, in The State of Peacebuilding in Africa (2021).

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