Why Does Sudan Prevent Humanitarian Workers from International Relief Work in Sudan?

As Sudan’s civil war rages on, volunteers who provide lifesaving medical care to the most vulnerable patients face harassment and arrest by the authorities, sparking outrage among the Sudanese people.

Momen Wad Zainab, a volunteer who works at Al-Naw Hospital in Omdurman, the third-largest city in the capital Khartoum, was detained by the army intelligence on July 25 and released the next day.

He is one of many volunteers who run public hospitals that operate with scarce resources, create emergency rooms in residential neighborhoods, and distribute food and other humanitarian aid to people in need.

The war, which began on April 15, 2023, between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, has devastated the country’s food production and infrastructure, forcing 3.3 million people to flee their homes.

The United Nations says that half of the population—24.7 million people—are suffering from food insecurity and plans to assist 18.1 million of them by the end of this year.

However, only 22% of the required $2.6 billion funding has been raised.

The volunteers, many of whom belong to resistance committees that led peaceful protests against military rule before the war broke out, have stepped in to fill the gap left by a few international organizations, such as the World Food Programme and Doctors Without Borders.

But they have also faced crackdowns from local governments that view them as a security threat.

 

Forced Eviction

In al-Qadarif state in eastern Sudan, the authorities tried for the third time on July 10 to evict a youth house that serves as a shelter and treatment center for patients with kidney failure, diabetes, and disabilities, as well as a reception point for those fleeing from fighting.

The youth house also has a kitchen where volunteers prepare food for displaced people in other centers within the city. Although military forces did not carry out the eviction order, the pressure is still ongoing.

The authorities have also restricted media access to cover the humanitarian crisis affecting the displaced people from Khartoum and other regions.

Journalists in al-Qadarif, al-Jazirah, and Darfur states have faced difficulties in moving around and reporting on the situation.

In an additional effort to sideline volunteers who provide services to displaced people, the authorities in White Nile and Sennar states in Sudan have set up parallel committees for emergency rooms, leaving the displaced to face their dire fate.

Meanwhile, the authorities have offered no assistance to those fleeing from intense fighting, and face growing allegations of collusion or negligence in allowing humanitarian aid from some Arab countries to leak into markets.

The United Nations says that humanitarian workers encounter many challenges, such as insecurity, bureaucratic hurdles, and looting of buildings and warehouses belonging to organizations, as well as lack of funding and low number of humanitarian staff and government counterparts on the ground.

It also says that these challenges, along with power outages and weak Internet and phone communication, have hampered humanitarian response.

The bureaucratic obstacles that the government imposes on organizations are incomprehensible, given the deteriorating humanitarian situation, which is expected to worsen with the ongoing waves of displacement and forced eviction of civilians from their homes.

The conflict’s duration and complexity may increase with the involvement of civilians and the alignment of tribal leaders to both sides of the war, deepening the suffering of millions of Sudanese who rely on daily work, which is disrupted by more than 80% of them.

 

Will Pressure Work?

The pressure on Sudan, which is grappling with a series of crises that have pushed it to the brink of collapse, is mounting day by day from humanitarian organizations, especially as a hunger crisis looms, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The Council says that local responders—referring to emergency rooms—have been working since the first days of the war outbreak to deliver lifesaving services to displaced and besieged people, but access to those in need has been severely restricted. It urges the international community to demand protection of civilians and humanitarian work based on principles and access to those in need with the most appropriate and timely interventions possible.

And 46 international organizations, including Islamic Aid, sent a joint appeal to the Sudanese authorities on July 23 regarding the need for their intervention to facilitate access to humanitarian aid and to resolve issues of pending visa applications, travel notifications, and approvals.

The appeal says that the current situation in Sudan requires immediate humanitarian action, pointing out that there are more than 110 visa applications for non-governmental humanitarian organizations pending indefinitely.

But it seems unlikely that the pressure from organizations on the Sudanese authorities to enable them to assist those who need it will yield results, at least for now, especially since they have a strong argument for the lack of security and the prevalence of looting acts, which they can use to hide their real concerns.

The authorities may fear the intentions of international humanitarian organizations that they cannot monitor their activities accurately with the continuation of the war, as well as fears related to exposing their inability to relieve those affected by the war.

And the authorities may also fear that shelters for displaced people and their humanitarian conditions will create local and international pressures on them to end the war peacefully, which prompts them to tighten their grip on volunteers and non-governmental humanitarian organizations.

In case of continued tightening, millions of people may be forced to loot in order to feed themselves and their families, especially in light of the lack of hope for ending the fighting soon, with increasing civil polarization and spreading hate speech.