When the world retreats: Volunteers are filling Sudan’s humanitarian void | Features

As the sun set over Kosti last week, Noha Kamal arrived in the Sudanese city south of the national capital, Khartoum, clutching little more than her seven-year-old daughter, Ihsan, her newborn twins, and a few plastic bags.

As fighting escalated in South Kordofan state, the diabetic 34-year-old mother of three fled the state capital of Kadugli, leaving behind an unfinished brick house and her husband, Muhammad Abdullah, who was away on a business trip. She did not know whether he was alive.

When she reached Kosti, a city of about 460,000 people in the White Nile state with more than 42 shelters and nine displacement camps, she expected to find a United Nations reception centre that would provide her with shelter, food and medicine.

Instead, a resident led her to a government school converted into a temporary shelter. The building, hosting dozens of other displaced families, was run by a neighbourhood committee and funded by Sudanese expatriates in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who wire money monthly to cover rent, food and basic healthcare.

“We seek to ease the burden on displaced persons and vulnerable groups, while promoting a culture of volunteerism and cooperation among the residents of Kosti,” says Emad Asalaya, a 28-year-old coordinator of the neighbourhood committee known as For Cost.

Local volunteer groups, such as For Cost, have taken over support for Sudanese displaced by two years of civil war pitting government forces against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that, as of now, have killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions.

Hundreds of such committees have sprung up around the country to provide shelter and food for hundreds of thousands of people since 2023.

Humanitarian donations dry up

Kamal said that, before she was forced to leave Kadugli, she had heard that aid agencies were providing food and medicine to displaced people fleeing to safety in cities like Kosti.

“I felt lost because I had three children with me, and my diabetes medication had run out on the way,” she said. “I was afraid that I would get sick and not be able to take care of my children. At that moment, all I could think about was a safe place to sleep.”

“In the end, it was the city’s residents and neighbourhood committees who helped us. They shared what they had with us, even though their own circumstances were not easy. If they hadn’t done that, I don’t know how we would have survived.”

Kamal was one of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese displaced by fighting in South Kordofan and el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, who were able to reach cities already strained by two years of civil war, only to find that international humanitarian infrastructure had largely contracted.

Almost a year ago, in a March 2025 statement, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, described sudden cuts by leading Western government donors as “a catastrophic blow” to humanitarian assistance in a country she called “one of the deadliest humanitarian crises of our times”.

Things have not improved since then.

The UN said it was forced to cut its 2026 humanitarian appeal to $23bn after steep cuts by Western donors, including the United States. The UN had originally sought $47bn for 2025, but later revised the figure as aid cuts by the new administration in the US, followed by other top Western donors, including Germany, became clear.

Local networks absorb what institutions cannot

More than half of Sudan’s population is hungry and famine is spreading, according to the UN. The cuts come as displacement continues to push families into Khartoum, Kosti, White Nile capital Rabak, and other urban centres already over capacity.

Between 300 and 400 families benefit daily from the meals provided by For Cost, according to its estimates. In October 2025, its health awareness campaign reached more than 1,600 girls during a breast cancer awareness drive. Funding comes from private contributions and local partner organisations, a community-assembled line of defence against a gap that international donors have left widening.

In Rabak, Dwalbit Mohamed, an engineering graduate from the Sudan University of Science and Technology, has led the initiative known as We Are All Values since July 2023, operating charity kitchens at the Qoz al-Salam displacement camp and organising meals for patients at Rabak Teaching Hospital and al-Jasser camp.

At Qoz al-Salam, Abdullah Muqaddam Toto, a 34-year-old father of five displaced from South Kordofan, lost his livelihood when fighting reached his area. He had worked as a baker. Today, meals from local initiatives are what keep his children fed. “This aid is not just food support,” he says. “It is a daily means of ensuring my children’s survival.”

Khartoum’s informal shelter network

In the al-Qutaiya neighbourhood in southern Khartoum, a family of five from el-Fasher arrived earlier this year carrying a small amount of food and clothing after a 1,000km (621-mile) journey.

Through the efforts of local neighbourhood committees and the Kalaqlatna Ghir initiative, led by Shadli Shamsuddin, a 32-year-old freelance worker, they were provided with an empty house as a temporary shelter and supplied with meals, drinking water, and psychological support for the children.

The initiative works by identifying unoccupied homes, coordinating with their owners or representatives, and distributing displaced families among them. Initiative coordinators say dozens of families benefit weekly from this arrangement, a system that exists almost entirely outside formal humanitarian infrastructure, in a capital where that infrastructure is nearly absent.

From Kosti to Rabak to Khartoum, the specific mechanisms change: a converted school, a camp kitchen, an empty apartment, but the dynamic is consistent: local communities absorbing a humanitarian burden that exceeds their resources, sustained by diaspora remittances, private donations, and volunteer labour, with no guarantee of continuity.

As war continues to reshape Sudan’s population geography, the question these networks face is not whether they can respond to emergencies — they already are — but whether improvised solidarity can hold under the weight of a crisis that international donors, by their own coordinator’s account, have left dangerously underfunded.

Asalaya warned that when humanitarian support declines, it directly impacts the number of families being served and the quality of the assistance provided.

“Despite this, we try not to let the displaced feel this shortage because they have come to us in very harsh circumstances, and it is our duty to support them as much as possible,” he said.

 

This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.