The Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan

Since conflict erupted in Sudan on April 15, 2023, between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, Sudan has become the site of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.  Over 10 million people have been displaced, over half of the population needs humanitarian assistance, and over 750,000 people are facing a catastrophic level of hunger.  

Panelists discuss ongoing humanitarian efforts, the challenges faced by aid workers, and potential solutions to mitigate the worsening crisis in Sudan.

GAVIN: Thank you so much. And thank you to everyone for joining us today to discuss the unbelievably alarming humanitarian crisis in Sudan. I’m Michelle Gavin. I’m the Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. And we have a tremendously thoughtful panel to help us grapple with this complex situation.  

We’re joined today by Kholood Khair. She is a Sudanese political analyst, the founder and director of Confluence Advisory, and really one of the most prominent and consistent voices calling the world’s attention to the plight and the priorities of the Sudanese people. 

We’re also joined by Kate Almquist Knopf, senior advisor at WestExec former director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, former assistant administrator for Africa at USAID, a former mission director in Sudan. She knows the country extremely well. 

And we have Susan Stigant. She’s the director of Africa Programs at the United States Institute of Peace, where she’s been closely involved with work on Sudan, the Horn, and the broader Red Sea region for many years.  

So this is an amazing panel of women. I am not going to talk too much. I’m just going to just kick us off at the start with some numbers. Since the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces broke out in April 2023, Sudan has become the site of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. It’s impossible to know with accuracy how many people have been killed, but we do know that over ten million Sudanese have been displaced. Over half the population needs humanitarian assistance to keep going. But humanitarian access has been very, very hard to come by—a result of deliberate choices made by the warring parties. And depending on the estimate, somewhere between three quarters of a million people and two and a half million people are at risk of starving to death in the months ahead.  

And what’s so alarming is that the crisis in Sudan has been ongoing for well over a year and these terrible numbers, they just keep ticking up. And too often we’re caught in a cycle in which all of the terrible warnings come to pass, and we find ourselves issuing new, even more catastrophic warnings. It can feel like an avalanche of human suffering and an ongoing testament to the failure of the world’s peace, security, humanitarian, and human rights architecture. So to kick us off, Susan, how did we get here? Which actors bear the most responsibility? And, with the benefit of hindsight, do you see points at which different decisions from external actors could have led to a better situation in Sudan than the one we’re dealing with today? 

STIGANT: Thanks, Michelle. And thanks to the Council on Foreign Relations for convening this important conversation. I’m really delighted to be part of the panel.  

I mean, at the foundation we are here because there are two generals who believe that the best and acceptable way to contest power and make decisions about their role in security, in politics, in business, is through armed conflict. I think that at this stage we see what seems to be a zero-sum battle, a political process that failed to deliver any alternatives to the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. And now I think, while I would give primary responsibility to the individuals who are in command and have responsibility for command and control, the conflict is continuing to evolve and devolve. That saying that it is a fight between two parties doesn’t capture the complexity, and the risks, and the directions of violence.  

So we know that there is a significant mobilization of popular defense forces. We know that there is a strong hand of the former regime—the former Bashir regime, and those who many talk about as Islamist—political Islamist actors who are stoking the violence that’s taking place. And then we know that the peace agreements that were signed with the Darfur armed groups, some that have not yet been signed by other armed groups, that this continues to feed into a cycle of fragmentation and polarization in the country.  

But the situation now has also been facilitated by the action or inaction of various external forces. And I think these are really consequential. The first that I’d highlight is reaching back to the moment following the revolution, the overthrow of President Bashir. And I think we collectively used a narrative that confused us about what had taken place and what had not. So the shorthand that we talked about at that time was the civilian-led transitional government. There was never a fully civilian-led transitional government. The courage and the organization of the Sudanese people to push to the streets and to stay in the square deserves all of the credit it gets. And we also need to remember that it was members within the Sudan Armed Forces that overthrew Bashir.  

Power was never handed over. We should never expect that power will be handed over. And I think a lot of our assumptions were based on a miscalculation and a misanalysis. Similarly, the international community, I think we failed to give oxygen into the political transition at that phase, or to set the guardrails that could have enabled civilian leadership to make the difficult decisions that are required and to start to reshape the power balance. The promises of financial assistance were incredibly slow to be delivered, and a lot of the diplomatic engagement I think lacked the courage and the clarity that that was required.  

And then, I mean, the final thing that I’ll highlight at this stage—and I know Kate and Kholood will come in further on this—is that after the violence started there hasn’t been a peace process that has been fit for purpose. Jeddah was convened, I think, as a—as a step for emergency diplomacy. And most Sudanese who you talk to will say, anybody who could have delivered an end to the war, we would have thanked them. But at the end of the day, those formats have not been adapted. There isn’t a single, unified or coherent one, or even an understanding about how all of the countries that have very deep interests—including those who are providing weapons, who are facilitating the transfer of gold and other resources in and out—there’s nothing that’s fully adapted into a coherent and shared approach. 

And I think this is ultimately the challenge that faces international partners today, is to recognize Russia has interests, Iran has interests, Egypt has interests, the Emiratis have interests, the United States has interests. How can those be acknowledged, addressed, and leveraged in a way that can, at the very least, stop the just horrendous human suffering that’s taking place? 

GAVIN: Yeah. And I would add, where do we find the leadership to harness all those forces? But please, Kate, Kholood, anything to add on this, how we got here and what we should learn from the mistakes made along the way? 

KATE: Kholood, why don’t you go first? 

KHAIR: I think there’s been a fundamental misreading of Sudanese politics over the past five years. I mean, I remember at the outset of the revolution every diplomat I spoke to in Khartoum said this would never amount to anything, and that the revolution would just never succeed, and that Omar al-Bashir’s staying power was just so strong that, you know, the protest in the streets could not topple him. And then, of course, that meant that at every step, really, the international community was left behind, and then found it very difficult to catch up.  

You know, that sort of what, as Susan said, made up the transitional period in terms of governing structures, it was mostly military led. And yet, the international community was still stuck calling it a civilian-led government. And those are the kinds of things that I think meant that the international community could never really respond in real time to the issues going on in Sudan. And we saw that very clearly with the coup. I mean, the United States government wouldn’t even call the coup a coup, even though by all metrics it was one.  

And of course, you know most, I think, frustrating for me, being in Khartoum in the run up to the war and trying to sound the alarm, as many others did, to say that this is where we’re heading. There will be military confrontation. It will be starting in Khartoum. And once it starts, it will not stop quickly. And yet being told no, no, the framework agreement—which had been signed in December—would be finalized, despite all of the tanks that we saw, you know, sort of streaming into Khartoum. 

And we really see this continuation of the attitudes, behaviors, and sort of assumptions—the wrong assumptions—that the international community has, particularly in the United States, continue to this day. And this is why when Susan talks about, you know, all of these different mediation platforms sort of faltering, the international community is expecting that the U.S. will take a lead role.  

Every diplomat I speak to, whether they’re African, from the sort of Middle East, or European, says, you know, we’re waiting for the U.S. to sort of take this bull by the horns and really push something forward, much like they did before. And that is just completely sort of absent. So there has to be a reckoning of sort of what role the U.S. has had thus far, and what role it’s prepared to take. But really sort of recognizing that the assumptions that have, you know, hitherto led to the U.S. approach have been completely wrong.  

GAVIN: Kate. 

KNOPF: I would just echo what Susan and Kholood have said. And just to further pinpoint that, you know, rather than bringing our political weight as the external actor to bear on—to tip the scale on behalf of the civilians, time and time again we have failed to do that. We continue to fail to do that, as Kholood and Susan have just mentioned. And instead, we put the primacy on the military and the security actors and undercut, as it were, I think, the very brave Sudanese civilians who are still fighting for their revolution and for a better country.  

I would just also add, in terms of the internal actors—Sudanese actors, with respect to the famine and the humanitarian situation specifically, that what we see today with, you know, over half the population—as you said, Michelle, more than 25 million, almost 26 million people in acute levels of food insecurity, that this is an intentional act on behalf of both the SAF and the RSF. That these forces do things over and over again to destroy food and livelihoods, to wipe out agricultural production, to obstruct humanitarian assistance from getting to the most vulnerable populations. Everything that they could possibly do to make it harder for people to eat and survive, each side is doing. And they do it intentionally as part of their war tactics.  

GAVIN: Thank you. It’s a perfect segue to kind of the next topic I want to touch on before we get to prescription. And we will get there. I want to reassure everyone, we’re not just going to admire the problem here. But I do want to tease out some of the implications that go well beyond Sudan.  

So, Kholood, what kind of reverberations should we expect from this crisis, from the world’s neglect of the Sudanese people, from this erosion of humanitarian norms? What does it mean for Sudan’s pretty fragile already neighbors? What does it mean that we’ve—that the actors who are funding this conflict and providing military support—what does it mean for them? And what are the consequences of people who are paying attention, including the Sudanese people first and foremost, of seeing how the world has responded to suffering in Ukraine, to suffering in Israel and Gaza, and then contrasting it with this anemic response to the suffering of the Sudanese people? What should we anticipate will be sort of the ripple effects of what’s happened to date? 

KHAIR: That’s a very big question, so let me start with the second part. I mean, I think that, you know, with the war in Ukraine, it fits into a sort of internationalized narrative of good versus evil that’s been around for a very long time. So it’s very easy for people to sort of capture what that war means in the broader scheme of things, even if it doesn’t necessarily impact them. With Israel and Palestine, I think, similarly, people across the world will find themselves somewhere within that struggle—whether it’s people who sort of see themselves in the place of the Palestinians, you know, with sort of this colonial oppressive regime sort of bearing down on them and really, sort of, you know, sympathize with that, or whether people see themselves, you know, within much more of the Israeli narrative, there is something that people can relate to. And that’s why I think we’ve seen such a broad response to what’s going on there. 

With Sudan, it’s just not very clear what this—what this conflict looks like. First of all, there is this, you know, quite frankly, quite tired and racist idea that, you know, Sudan and African generals is this place where war is not only inevitable, but perpetual. But beyond that, there’s also not a very easy narrative about what’s going on in Sudan. So I often like to just break it down for people and say that this is a counterrevolutionary war. These generals are fighting each other, yes, but they’re also fighting each other for the privilege of taking over a Sudan that is, you know, sort of free from revolution. And as Kate just pointed out, using starvation as a weapon of war is a very cheap and effective way to kill a lot of people, particularly those who are at the forefront of the revolution in 2018 and 2019. 

And so that’s—I think part of the problem is how we tell the story. And the starvation, the famine, the sort of atrocities against different groups, the attacks and targeting against, for example, pro-democracy actors, journalists, and doctors who have had, you know, elections to mandate their professional associations within a democratic system, et cetera, they’re being targeted precisely because the generals do not want to have—to have to contend with any pro-democracy actors if and when, as they see it, they take over and then and they win. And, of course, the danger here is that if they strike a deal with each other at some point, then they will really sort of turbo-boost their sort of oppressive act against the people of Sudan.  

But your question is also about, you know, how does this then reverberate? And I think what we’re clearly seeing is that while these generals and their allies are waging a war against the people of Sudan, they’re also precipitating very rapid, frankly, state collapse. And we’re seeing this very much in real time. And I think this is why this goes well beyond Sudan. I mean, Sudan is a large country, both in terms of population but also in terms of size. Where it sits geo-strategically—you know, a country undergoing state collapse and what that brings.  

You know, jihadism, all sorts of different nefarious actors having supremacy, complete fragmentation within the country, and all sort of ethnic and political strife, that doesn’t really bode well for countries, for example, in the Red Sea Basin, countries who are already teetering on edge, seen so much tumult and political changes in the past few years. And so Sudan really sits in a bad neighborhood. But it also has a potential to exacerbate the problems that we’re seeing in this neighborhood within the confluence of the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, and the Sahel, and make them far, far worse. And only a few countries, I would say, have started to recognize what this looks like.  

But frankly speaking, you have countries, you know, with the sort of withdrawal, if we can say, of U.S. influence over this region, you have countries that are U.S. allies—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE—that are playing a nefarious role in Sudan. We know, Sudanese people, that these are countries that have never wanted democracy in Sudan. It threatens their own democracy. It threatens their own interests, particularly economic interests, in Sudan. But beyond that, you know, it is these countries that are skirting, effectively, U.S. policy—which is, quite frankly, very unclear on Sudan. And they’re enabled very much by Washington, whether it’s intentional or not, to have these sort of adventures and misadventures—not only in Sudan, but further afield as well in the region.  

And so when we look at Sudan, we have to look at this simultaneously as a country undergoing state collapse, and everything that is enduring and might endure for the next twenty years of history as a guide, but also at the same time look at it within the picture—the sort of the area that it’s in. You know, Chad is an issue, particularly for the French. You have countries like Egypt, of course, and then the Red Sea, and Saudi Arabia, et cetera, who are very concerned about what this could look like. But again, without any sort of leadership from their main ally, the United States, there has been a floundering.  

And then, of course, there are countries who just seemingly want only to—rather than seek peace, to sort of keep this war going in order to get whatever—eke out whatever interest they can. You know, here you have the United Arab Emirates, that is very much looking for Red Sea—a role on the Red Sea. It wants to do that through supporting the Rapid Support Forces. Iran, similarly, has been vying for a Red Sea presence, and they will back the Sudanese Armed Forces as long as possible in order to do so. And countries like Russia, who play both sides in order to sort of meet their interests in both spheres—both the Red Sea Basin and the Sahelian region—and they will do that by supporting both sides.  

So it’s a very complex picture. We’re going towards fragmentation, as Susan said, not just state collapse. So currently we’re looking at two major belligerents that we’re engaging with in terms of ending the war. Soon, there might be ten, fifteen, who knows? Again, Sudan has a history, as you know, of this mushrooming of political and armed actors. So there is also an urgency. But that urgency relies on us also recognizes the historical context in which this all plays out, and what exactly it would mean if there are these broader reverberations of the war in Sudan. 

GAVIN: I think that’s so helpful to help people understand the stakes here. And, you know, particularly with reference to the Red Sea and its importance for the global economy, it’s makes it all the more puzzling that we have such an absence of clarity—strategic clarity about U.S. policy.  

But, Kate, Susan, you want to come in on this? And then we’ll go to prescription. 

STIGANT: Kate, go ahead. 

KNOPF: OK. Quickly, I’ll leave Red Sea and geostrategy to Susan. But just to double down on the state collapse point, you know, I was refreshing on the definition of what a collapsed state is, as opposed to a failed state. And just to quote one political scientist real quickly, you know, “a collapsed state is a rare and extreme version of a failed state. Political goods are obtained through private or ad hoc means. Security is equated with the rule of the strong. A collapsed state exhibits a vacuum of authority. It is a mere geographical expression, a black hole into which a failed polity has fallen.”  

And I think it’s hard to deny that that doesn’t describe Sudan at this point in time. And just, you know, to Kholood’s point, the prospect now that we have this collapse of the state in Sudan—never mind all the reasons why Sudan itself is important, which I’m sure Susan will reiterate—the fact that we will tolerate any state collapse of this magnitude and just watch it happen and accept it, seemingly, and continue, as we’ve said already, with peace processes, Susan pointed out, that are not fit for purpose. It really demands new strategies, new international architecture, perhaps even, to respond to both to the political reality, the security reality, and, of course, the actual human life reality. 

STIGANT: I mean, I would just add that I think—I was just out in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Egypt. And I heard sort of two narratives. One that’s more about the geopolitical realities. And what Kholood laid out in terms of the geopolitical centrality of Sudan—where you have Russia securing a port, Iran reestablishing a presence, the connection across this belt of instability and coups in the Sahel, the largest and most important maritime artery leading from the Red Sea up into the Mediterranean—Sudanese know and understand this. They’ve articulated this since the moment and even prior to the revolution. And I think at best, people are a bit baffled as to why they can’t make the connection between this geostrategic argument and action and level of attention and priority in in the White House in the United States, and globally. 

And it’s a very strange conversation to have with people to say, yes, that makes sense. It’s a clear, sophisticated argument. The fears that you are articulating, the desire to be a partner—a democratic partner to the United States, that lands with me. And somehow even people inside of the U.S. government who are making the case can’t get the traction up. And so I think that leaves people quite puzzled, honestly. And, Michelle, you know, this is something that we continue to puzzle with in the Red Sea Senior Study Group. And I don’t know that we have a good answer.  

And then there’s a second part that might fall into the kind of soft power category of the things. And I was just with a group of Sudanese women who came together to articulate a draft set of principles and priorities of how they define security themselves and how they would take that into talks. I had similar conversations with Ethiopian women. And in both instances, the United States was facilitating talks between belligerents—men with guns—with no women present, with no mechanism for women’s involvement, no mechanism for frontline responders to articulate how they understand security and what they would want to be included in a cessation of hostilities.  

And we know that, you know, leaders sign agreements, people have to implement them. And all of the commitments that have been made in this liberal global order, people are looking around and saying, well, we’re being told we have to do it in some instances, but we don’t see the leadership to ensure that it takes place in others. And I worry deeply that as we anticipate other conflict and violence, making that case, recreating that muscle memory for something that we know that ultimately works—and works better and last longer—will be so much more difficult in the future, 

GAVIN: Sobering and really important points. So, given where things stand, and in particular the looming prospect of mass starvation, Kate, kick us off on what can be done now to prevent the worst-case scenarios from unfolding. We can learn from the past. We can try to move forward in a way that makes sense. So I do feel that—I find myself and many of my colleagues spend a lot of time trying to draw attention to the crisis, but it is valid to say, well, we need more than attention. We need a plan. So I know you’ve given this a lot of thought, Kate. What could we do? 

KNOPF: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Michelle. I really do think that a paradigm shift is needed in our humanitarian response. For Sudan, for sure, perhaps in some other contexts as well. We have to deliver aid despite the mounting obstacles, in the absence of ceasefire agreements in whole or in part, and even without the unfettered access that international humanitarian law demands that the parties provide, right, for response to civilian populations in dire need. We have been through situations somewhat like this before, but just to really stress that this is far beyond any recorded famine that Sudan has ever seen. We are now in the lean season of June to August. It’s the planting season. We’re also in the rainy season. Which—both things are compounding the crisis.  

Mass starvation is happening now. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification System is reluctant, I think, to call it and to have the full evidence that normally we would all like to have in order to make the categorical determination. But we have enough evidence to know and enough experience of past dire famine in this country, in this region, the continent, to understand that this is a worse famine unfolding presently than any recorded famine in Africa, most likely. We have to go to Ukraine, we have to go to Cambodia, China—mega, mega famine to get to the scale that we were talking about what is happening in Sudan presently.  

And so at this point we can’t avert famine. We can mitigate the breadth and the scale of it, but only by surging humanitarian aid at a massive level to the populations most in need. Who are very hard to reach, and to whom aid is being obstructed. So very quickly I’ll run off a few things, and happy to come back to them in the Q&A and leave Kholood and Susan to come in further on it. But we’ve got to get beyond, you know, the prospect of famine. We need to declare a famine. This is—this is happening. And all the systems need to gear up to the level that it requires. It is the worst hunger situation on the planet. Is also the largest displacement crisis on the planet. And that’s saying a lot, given the other challenges that we know about.  

We need to know how many people are dying. We have to have a way of credibly estimating the excess mortality, to use the wonky term, of the situation in Sudan—both from violence and indirect causes of the conflict, which means starvation and disease. And we have to appreciate the magnitude of this and take that very, very seriously. There are ways to do that. We need to plan for a multiyear famine, because as bad as it is this year we’re missing the planting season now. We’ve just seen massive more destruction of agricultural areas, sadly, in eastern Sudan that will make next year’s harvest even more challenging. And so we can see that the risk factors are already compounding for the next year. And so that has very grave implications too.  

We need to adopt a no-regrets approach to our humanitarian programming, so that our aid partners can take the maximum risks feasible. And it is very risky, of course, to traverse these zones of control, if I can say it that way, and to navigate with the different belligerent parties, even if we can get past some of the government—so-called government obstructions. We need a multisector humanitarian operation to address the country as it is. And I think this is, you know, one of my most important points. We have to stop treating the country as we wish it still were, with one central, unified national government with control over the country. We don’t have that. We do have different belligerent actors in different levels of control of different parts of the country. We need to be very practical and pragmatic from a humanitarian perspective and deal with those on the ground who are in the way of getting to the people in need.  

And not, for instance—and most especially—continue to seek permission from one warring party to provide assistance in the area of the other warring party, because that is—that is aiding and abetting, as it were, for instance, the SAF’s war tactics against the RSF-controlled areas right now. And it is leaving Darfur vastly exposed. But famine is not just threatening Darfur. It’s threatening Kordofan, it’s threatening the capital city, it’s threatening parts of eastern Sudan. So it is across multiple zones of control. We need to treat each of them in turn and be as practical as possible. Happy to come back to some of the ways I think that could be accomplished.  

I think we need to level consequences on armed actors for continued obstruction, for denial, for theft of humanitarian assistance, for attacks on humanitarian workers. Continuing to just wag our fingers at them isn’t having any effect, right? And so I don’t think sanctions, sadly, are having a great effect. But I do think that they—each side is seeking legitimacy. They crave that. There are ways that we could, external actors, deny them things that they do desire in response to behavior that we can’t tolerate. So let me stop there and put those ideas on the table. And happy to pick any of them up as would be interest. 

GAVIN: Thank you so much. I think those are incredibly important. And I can’t help but just underscore your point around legitimacy. Neither of these main belligerents has any. They’re not—they were not chosen by the Sudanese people. They don’t have constitutional and legal legitimacy. They don’t have democratic—but we continue to engage, in some ways, as if they did. And I think freeing ourselves from that is a great starting point.  

Kholood, what should we do now? 

KHAIR: Well, I mean, just to—just before I answer that, I mean, I think that, again, going back to the way that the belligerents were treated after the coup, and that everything rested on them, and we’re still seeing that to this place, and—to this—at this point. And it’s having a devastating, deadly effect. This is no longer a policy that is just misguided. It is actually making the U.S., and the U.N., and others complicit in the famine that is currently ongoing, and complicit in starvation as a weapon of war. And that’s a very serious thing that I think requires a reckoning very quickly in both the U.S. and at the U.N. headquarters in New York, and elsewhere. Without that, I don’t think we’ll be able to move forward to the kind of approaches that we need to make sure that we, frankly, save as many lives as possible.  

And Kate is absolutely right. Right now the picture looks extremely grim. Next year, it will—by next year, it will be apocalyptic. And so there is a way, I think, we need to sort of work with local emergency responders, mutual aid groups, et cetera, make sure that we are giving them as much funding as they can absorb. Make sure we don’t make them into NGOs, and rather let them be—and work in the way that makes them most effective. And then, you know, if there needs to be—there need to be changes in the way that organizations and groups are funded on the ground, then those changes need to be made very quickly at headquarter level. Because right now, it’s the bureaucratic impediments in places like Washington, Whitehall, and Brussels that are effectively helping with the starvation of the Sudanese people.  

And these groups, they’re already on the ground. They already they already exist. They’re already working. They’re already proving their value. What they don’t have is enough financing. What they don’t have is enough protection as humanitarian actors. And what they don’t have is enough recognitions as part of this solution, or at least mitigation to this famine. Now they have, frankly, even been to many places, including Washington, D.C., to try to make this case. And I think effectively taking time out of their very, very busy and important work to do that. And we haven’t seen enough of a shift, I think—not just in D.C., but elsewhere—that recognizes the contribution that they’re making.  

And effectively, you know, goes beyond the lip service that we have seen for localization within the—within the aid industry for some time. And I think if this does not cause a reckoning, and if this, you know, humanitarian disaster does not cause a very quick rethink and a very serious rethink of how we implement mitigation programs, of how we deal with hunger, then, frankly, I don’t know what will. 

GAVIN: That’s so important. And so important to acknowledge that there are people on the ground who have organized themselves to help their countrymen and women. And, you know, I think part of what is happening broadly is a sense of sort of impotence and there’s nothing to be done. And reminding ourselves that that’s absolutely not true, that people in some of the most difficult circumstances one can imagine are, in fact, helping, sort of brings us back to a place of responsibility.  

Susan, the last word on prescription. 

STIGANT: Thanks, Michelle. I mean, just to build off of why supporting local responders, obviously, effective, present. And this is the foundation and the reflection of what came in the revolution and, in my mind, is the foundation and the legacy and continuation of the nation of Sudan, right? This is the definition of what it means to be Sudanese, at its best. And so we should be supporting for the humanitarian imperatives, but this is also an incredibly important investment in the future and what the United States thinks about as its partnership.  

A couple of other quick additions. One, there has been this narrative that sequencing has to be to get a cessation of hostilities and then move towards humanitarian access and protection provisions. This is not real. (Laughs.) So we need to break that open. Of course, humanitarian access has to be negotiated at the most local levels to move across lines and across borders. This happens. And humanitarian actors are incredibly seasoned at this. But this is not going to happen at tables in capitals in far-off places. Similarly, I don’t think we have the luxury of waiting to get a full agreement to deploy some sort of monitoring mechanism, some sort of documentation mechanism, and protection for key infrastructure that will be necessary to get humanitarian assistance in.  

And so we have to flip the script on this, because at this point the SAF and the RSF are calling the shots and are setting the agenda in a way that is going to impede the response from a humanitarian perspective, and set tracks on the political process that will be almost impossible to reverse overall. And I think a final sort of tactical thought is telecommunications have been incredibly difficult. Getting the telecoms turned back on opens up space towards electronic banking, facilitates the work of local responders, allows those who can trade to do so, and to start to increase self-reliance. I think we also have this notion that humanitarian assistance is part of a humanitarian industry. My supposition would be that if you can open access, if access can be negotiated, there are many private-sector actors who would happily step in to make money in order to move assistance into places it needs to go. And this—I think we have to really rethink those approaches.  

And finally, I believe that the scale of this crisis, the scale of the political complexity here, does require a clear, coherent, and coordinated approach. So envoys will be meeting in the coming weeks. I hope that they will come up with some near-term shared priorities, some delineation of roles, and figuring out which heads of state can be activated. Because it will take the level of heads of state. I don’t think this is going to happen in the United States over the next six to ten months. Sudanese people know this. People who have a stake in this conflict know this. And so part of the U.S. role, I think, needs to be activating those who are—who are more willing and more prepared in their own domestic political timelines to be able to step in. 

GAVIN: Great, practical points. Let’s open it up for questions.  

OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.) 

We’ll take the first question from Alex Wallace. 

Q: Hi. Thank you for this. Alex Wallace, IESE Business School.  

I’m going to modify my question. My question was going to be, who are the most active humanitarian organizations on the ground. Doesn’t sound like there’s any access. Who are the most active humanitarian organizations externally helping the local groups? 

GAVIN: Who wants to give that a try? Kate? 

KNOPF: I was—I was going to point out to Kholood. 

GAVIN: OK, Kholood, go for it. 

KHAIR: I mean, until very recently MSF was doing, you know, God’s work, effectively, staying in places that are very inaccessible and very—you know, very much at the at the forefront or at the battlefront. They have now had to, unfortunately, close down many of their health centers because of insecurity and because, you know, neither side, and particularly, the RSF, could guarantee some level of security. We’ve seen ICRC ambulances being shot at. You know, we’ve seen WFP workers in the first days of the war being shot at. And so there is this sort of risk averseness, if you will, from humanitarian actors that we have seen now become almost total. And this means that there aren’t actually that many on the ground.  

Now, what we have seen is that there are some, for example, like French NGO Solidarités, working in parts of western Darfur. We’ve seen NGOs, like the Norwegian Refugee Council, and others. You know, I can get you a list. But what I think we’re seeing is that these NGOs are trying to work across the whole country. And this goes back to Kate’s point about, you know, Sudan is no longer that one cohesive mass. And therefore there may be choices that have to be made by some of these NGOs about where they will choose to work, as they will be required by the humanitarian imperative to contravene the diktats given by SAF and the RSF. And so we might have what as we had in the ’90s, where people have to choose which zone—whether it’s government control zone at the time or SPLM zones to work in. And we will have that again.  

But there aren’t that many, frankly, NGOs that are still functioning, you know. And then most of them had gone to Port Sudan very much soon after the war started in Khartoum. And then some of them have left altogether. 

KNOPF: Maybe, Michelle, just to quickly jump in to say that I think that Sudan provides an opportunity for some of the innovation that is needed in the humanitarian response system, the architecture, to really take advantage and appreciate the depth of the local responders that Kholood and Susan have just talked about, and not just see them as substitutes or because the international NGOs can’t get in there or aren’t getting in there because of the risk calculus in different ways, or, you know, being constrained by seeking permissions from, you know, one side in Port Sudan, in this previous understanding of, you know, government visas, and travel permissions, and authorizations to move, et cetera, et cetera.  

So I do concur with Kholood that I think we need alternate pipelines, alternate, you know, aid operations that are built for each zone of control. And maybe that means everyone can’t work in all of those, but we have to be much more creative to take advantage of, really, the depth of response that is happening on the ground. And getting telecoms and cash moving—(inaudible)—is so important for that. 

GAVIN: Thank you. Let’s take our next question. 

OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Robert Rotberg. 

Q: Robert Rotberg of Harvard, Kennedy School.  

This is very enlightening, but one area that I don’t think has been touched on. Don’t we have to find a way to remove the interference of the UAE, and the Russia Africa Corps to end this conflict? 

GAVIN: Well, thanks for that. I think, you know, whoever wants to go first, be my guest. But I—you know, I think all of our panelists did talk about the financial and material support that’s being provided to both sides by different actors pursuing their interests. So I think that the laundry list of entities who have concerns and interests in Sudan, that I think Susan laid out for us, all of—all of them are going to have to be considered for any kind of resolution and to ensure that, ultimately, that the Sudanese people actually are the authors of the next chapter. But anyone with thoughts directly on Russia and the UAE? 

KHAIR: I’m happy to jump in, if no one else wants to. I mean, I think that, you know, with the UAE, the U.S. finds itself in quite a tough position. Quite frankly speaking, Sudan is not as important to the United States as the UAE is. And whereas the UAE has chosen a side, the U.S. is sort of hedging because it doesn’t want to necessarily back one side or the other knowing that this war, like many others in Sudan, will probably end in a mediated settlement. So there’s no sense in sort of isolating yourself from one or the other. Now, that approach makes sense sort of within that particular logic, but there—are but there been, you know, a lot of very frustrated people who feel that the U.S. should just take a side—both in D.C. and in Sudan. And I’m not sure what the value of that necessarily would be, if that’s the only tactic you’re going to take.  

It seems to me—it makes a lot of sense to me that one could probably still maintain their relationship with Abu Dhabi, especially because of how much Abu Dhabi and Riyadh rely on Washington largess particularly in the security field, and still push for some changes in UAE tactics. And I think, you know, when it comes to Russia, it’s obviously a very different—a very different issue. The U.S. has very little that it can sort of force the Russians to do. But what we have seen is that the U.S. is not even engaging on the Russia issue, right? So when Russia made it very clear that it was going to be seeking this nuclear naval base on the Red Sea, the U.S. didn’t move either by itself or with its allies in a very sort of tangible way to try and curb this.  

I just don’t think that the—you know, Washington’s eye is on this at all. And in many ways, that can mean that it will fall through the cracks. But I think beyond just the Russia-U.S., you know, enmity, shall we say, we also have to look at what is going on in the region. So you have—you know, the Saudis’ recent rapprochement with Iran means that they are cautious of an Iranian presence on the Red Sea, but it’s not so much of a threat as it used to be before. Now, with the Iranian elections recently, and the election—and the sort of success—electoral success of a reformer, not Saudi’s guy, they are now sort of worried about what this could look like long term. But there is enough evidence to suggest that Saudi has been, in part, greenlighting some of Iran’s actions in—with the SAF in Sudan, partially because of its growing competition with the United Arab Emirates.  

And so there’s a lot that needs to go. You know, the UAE itself also relies on Russia, which it sort of has been pushing, if you will, to engage in Sudan in a way that it can control. It’s also relying on Russia to control Iran, which, to me, does not make sense—especially because Iran has a very—is very much closer, both in terms of geographic proximity but also in terms of the way it engages, in the Red Sea and in Sudan. And so there are a lot of, I think, competitions that are away from the sort of Euro-American sphere that we really need to look at in terms of what the relationship is like between Iran-Saudi, and Iran-UAE, and UAE-Saudi. As well as, of course, bringing in Egypt and many other countries. So, yes, there does need to be sort of a reckoning of what U.S. allies are doing in the region, but also sort of a recognition that their assumptions and their logics are also informed more locally, as well as within the larger geostrategic picture, or larger political picture. 

GAVIN: Thank you. This is a great point. And I think maybe points to some anachronisms in the way the U.S. has been thinking about this region.  

Can we take our next question?  

OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Tami Hultman. 

Q: Hi. This is Tami from AllAfrica.  

The big picture you’ve outlined is the most important avenue to pursue. But as a very short-term, ameliorative action, could the United States and other European countries streamline humanitarian visas? After all, the U.S., and the Netherlands, and others shredded the passports and documents that were at their embassies with applications to visit or to—or to join families, including those of their own citizens, leaving unknown numbers stranded. 

GAVIN: Does anyone want to take that? I think, you know, the problem of humanitarian visas is—you know, has a long history with Sudan, certainly. But it’s not—it’s not one that’s within the control of the U.S. So anyone on what the U.S. could do to ease these kinds of bureaucratic hurdles? 

KNOPF: Now, maybe, Michelle, just to distinguish. I’m not sure if the questioner was wanting to know about humanitarian visas for aid workers and those trying to get into Sudan to help—which we’re seeing immense bureaucratic hurdles, a time-worn game that the SAF still, you know, purporting to be the government of Sudan, is playing. We’ve played this game many, many, many times over with Khartoum in the past. And, sadly, not in Khartoum any longer, but Port Sudan now, as the case may be. And I think the key here is really for the donors to start emboldening partners who are willing to take risks, who can do those local access negotiations that Susan was talking about, to move irrespective of the permission of Port Sudan for the areas that it does not control.  

That’s a huge change from the way things are currently operating, with the SAF eking out some, you know, visas, some permissions, some travel authorizations for short bits at a time, some cross-line movements, some very limited cross-border access. And all too little and too late for the scale of the response that’s necessary. So hence why we have to move past that. We have to start treating the country as it is. We have to get beyond a legal opinion, so-called, of the United Nations, which found that the SAF was, you know, the government of Sudan, despite the coup that took place. Obviously, a lot more water has gone under the bridge, to say it that way, now. Facts have materially changed. And that needs to be revisited to free up U.N. agencies to work on all sides of this conflict situation, and not be beholden to the stranglehold of the SAF from Port Sudan.  

If the question was for Sudanese to have humanitarian visas to come to the United States as one measure of refuge for them, then I think that takes us into a different dimension of policy and complicated factors beyond just Sudan, and who we allow into the country for, you know, humanitarian reasons, and not. So I will stop there. 

KHAIR: But if I can also just add to that, I mean, we’ve seen that, for example, with Ukraine there have been humanitarian visas that have been, you know, enabled, and safe routes enabled for Ukrainian refugees—both in Europe, and in Canada, and elsewhere. And those processes simply don’t exist for Sudan. Now, I think as Sudanese we know very well that there’s a not just a hierarchy but very much a taxonomy of suffering that the world has placed. And Sudanese people are very much at the bottom of that. And so we haven’t seen that the kind of response that I think one would expect from a situation like Sudan’s reflected in the visa regimes of Europe, North America, and elsewhere. That is something that we should be—we should be seeing more of. But, quite frankly, with Sudan having such little impact in—or, having such little footprint in in both media circles and in policy circles, I don’t think we’re going to see that anytime soon. 

STIGANT: Michelle, if I could also just add that I think this is another area where the U.S. could be partnering with neighboring states and those who are hosting large numbers of Sudanese who have fled the country. So we spent a lot of time on what’s happening inside of the country and those who are maybe immediately across the borders into Chad and otherwise who face dire humanitarian circumstances. But we know, for example, that Sudanese who have gone to Egypt, they can’t leave the country with guarantee of coming back to rejoin their families. Most of them are also—many are struggling to get permits to work. Young people who were in university can’t afford to continue into university.  

And so there is precedent in other situations where the U.S. and other partners have supported the reestablishment of a university at a third location for a moment so that those young people don’t lose their entire education and are better prepared, in the hopes that there is a country for them to go back to and to contribute to. Alternatively, supporting academic institutions in Kenya or in South Africa that have had the benefit of that type of assistance in the past could also, I think, have a profound effect on how the U.S. and external partners are viewed, and where the solidarity actually stands in this conflict and crisis. 

GAVIN: Great addition. Thank you, Susan. Let’s take one more. 

OPERATOR: We’ll take the last question from Dane Smith. 

Q: Thank you.  

I was struck yesterday to learn that the Sudan Armed Forces, purporting to be the government of Sudan, had sent a Note Verbale at some point to the U.N. saying, no, you can’t use the Adre entry of humanitarian aid from Chad. Only Tina is the possible entry point. That struck me as a bureaucratic obstacle there should be ways to overcome in the—in the nature of the creative approaches that you guys have outlined. Could you comment further on that one? Why can’t the U.S. just override that in some way, or find a way around it?  

KNOPF: Yeah, maybe just to reiterate real quickly—a great point, Dane. As you well know, the humanitarians need Adre for moving commodities at scale into Darfur, and number of different directions. Tina is woefully insignificant—or, woefully insufficient, I should say, for what is needed. And of course, now is even cut off by rains, I think, we’re starting to see happen. So we’re really challenged by that. I do think it takes a bold policy decision from, for instance, the United States, as the leading humanitarian donor, to tell partners that we will support you, we will fund you, we will put pressure on the parties not to mess with you, to move commodities across the border from wherever they can be moved at this point, including Adre, and to take them to the people that need them.  

So that does require a whole host of negotiations, and risk calculus, of course, and partnership, I believe. But I think more creative operations could be had if the minds were put to it, and the funding, and the no-regrets policy that I mentioned earlier were applied for the partners to be able to take risks that we normally wouldn’t be so comfortable with, in terms of accountability for the resources and the commodities. So that does mean that we have to move past this holdover, if I can say it that way, of treating the SAF like the government of Sudan, of giving it more legitimacy than it’s due at this point, in terms of facts on the ground. Not to, you know, prejudice what comes out of a political process going forward, and how these other pieces that Susan and Kholood and Michelle have referenced in terms of the coherence of the mediation effort and what a future state of Sudan looks like.  

But right now, for humanitarian operations, we have to break that stranglehold. And so if the SG is not going to revisit that Office of Legal Affairs decision and opinion on that for the U.N. agencies, then the major donors like USAID and ECHO need to start funding alternate partners who can and will move commodities and work in these areas that the U.N. may feel like they cannot. 

KHAIR: Yeah. Just to add to what Kate said, there is a precedent here. And that precedent is Syria. And at the time, the U.N. was very hesitant in moving cross-border aid without some kind of U.N. Security Council resolution and, of course, without the explicit permission from the Assad regime. And at the time, the NGOs moved first. They said, we are willing to put the humanitarian imperative above any claim, any sort of sovereignty. And they did so. And two years later, the U.N. sort of got the backbone, if you will, to follow suit. Now in Sudan, you don’t even have that problem because there isn’t a constitutionally recognized government in Sudan.  

And so I just can’t, for the life of me—I think your question is a very good one, Dana. You know, why is the U.S. not—and allies and others—why are they not just forcing this through? Why are they not showing the two belligerent sides, effectively, that we will not allow you to starve the people that you purport to represent, who’s sovereignty—who’s, you know, sort of backs, if you will, you’re claiming a sovereignty on. It is quite, you know, an intriguing and deeply frustrating thing. But the answer is very clear, that you put the humanitarian imperative first and you move as soon as possible. 

GAVIN: I think this is a great point to end on, and to remind ourselves, right, that when we think about the risks of taking those kinds of decisions, we have to look at the risks of continuing as we’ve been. And those are so dire as to be, yes, apocalyptic, catastrophic. We’ve used all our most extreme warnings, and it is a long past time to reassess those risks. So I want to thank our panelists so much for joining us, for all of their expertise and insight, and thank all of the attendees today. Thank you so much. 

(END) 

This is an uncorrected transcript.