Compassion tempers a war’s impact
In Sudan, an East African nation where a civil war has entered its third year, volunteers are heeding a traditional concept rooted in Islam – nafeer – to bring succor and practical support to those displaced by fighting. They are operating communal kitchens and emergency shelters, providing safe spaces for children to learn and play, and arranging evacuations from areas under bombardment.
At some point, their example might even help inform negotiations to end a war that has caused an estimated 150,000 deaths and displaced some 12 million Sudanese.
These citizen-supported “emergency response rooms,” as they are called, are not new. For centuries, through collective action in local communities, Sudanese have helped one another build homes, bring in a harvest, and cope with natural disasters. The first mass-organized nafeer campaign was formed in 2013 in response to severe flooding. Currently, more than 700 response rooms function in areas controlled by the two warring factions in the war.
“Without [the emergency response rooms], I could not even imagine what our lives in this conflict would look like,” one meal recipient told The New Humanitarian news agency. The term nafeer, which in Arabic means a “call to mobilize,” comes from an Islamic term associated with a spiritual struggle to align oneself with Allah’s will.
As elsewhere in the world during times of crisis ordinary Sudanese are displaying extraordinary courage and resourcefulness to both aid and unite civilians in humanitarian efforts, setting a vision for postwar society. In recognition of this, a mid-April conference in London brought pledges of $750 million in aid from the United Kingdom and European Union. But it failed to engender a consensus on how to end the war.
Even as the international community continues deliberations to end the war, Sudan’s nonpartisan mutual-aid networks offer pointers for a different future. According to the Baker Institute for Public Policy, these structures challenge the common assumption that civilians, especially in aid-dependent contexts, “lack agency during times of conflict.” Even more profound is the emergency response rooms’ embrace of inclusivity and possession of what one analyst identifies as “moral clarity and the trust of the people they are serving.”
Will Sudan’s current and future leaders heed this example?
