Sudan’s community kitchens shut down amid attacks and aid cuts

In early February, Amira Abdallah left her shelter in the Abu Shouk displacement camp in Darfur, Sudan, carrying an old stainless steel bowl.

Her five children hadn’t eaten since the previous day. As she joined a crowd waiting for local volunteers to hand out meals, she thought of how excited they would be when she returned home with her bowl full of warm, fluffy rice.

Nothing prepared her for what came next. When the food had been served, the volunteers announced that it was the last meal they could provide. The soup kitchen was closing. There was no more money.

Ms. Abdallah returned home with tears welling in her eyes. What would she tell the children?

Since civil war broke out between two factions of Sudan’s military exactly two years ago, the country has plunged into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. More than half of the country’s population regularly does not have enough to eat, and two-thirds of Sudanese rely on some form of humanitarian assistance for their survival. And almost nowhere is safe. In recent days, for instance, the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has shelled Abu Shouk and other famine-stricken camps in north Darfur, killing dozens of civilians, including many children.

For many of those living in these camps, grassroots mutual aid groups have been the difference between life and death, providing essentials like food and water to places that international organizations cannot reach.

However, the freeze on U.S. foreign assistance earlier this year left many of these youth-led groups, known as emergency response rooms, without their main financial backer. Of the 1400 community kitchens that ERRs were operating at the beginning of this year, at least 900 have since halted their work. This includes a number of groups profiled by the Monitor last year.

“The current situation in Sudan is a disaster where civilians are paying the price of a war that they’re victims of,” says Omran Suleiman, who works with the Tawila ERR in North Darfur. His group used to serve meals to over 3,000 people a day. Since February, it has been able to feed only 40 a day.

Aid fatigue

When ERRs emerged early in the war, they were mainly run with resources that displaced community members could carry from their homes. As the war progressed, their activities gained global attention, and donations began to flow in from Sudanese in the diaspora and individuals who admired their work. Last year, ERRs were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

International organizations also took notice, and began to partner with the groups, providing vital cash so that they could reach more people. This included significant funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the form of cash transfers.

El Tayeb Siddig/Reuters

Sudanese men wait to receive rations at a community kitchen that feeds people impacted by the civil war that began two years ago.

That funding was part of some $661 million that USAID distributed in Sudan last year, accounting for nearly half of the global humanitarian response to the crisis. Among other things, this aid provided emergency food assistance to nearly 7 million Sudanese. In the first year of the war, the U.S. also provided safe drinking water to more than 8 million people.

But in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order putting a temporary freeze on all U.S. foreign assistance. In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that more than 80% of all USAID grants were being permanently cut.

While the majority of aid to Sudan was retained, the country lost at least $248 million it would have received, according to analysis by the Monitor of a document presented to Congress in March about the status of all USAID-funded programs.

These cuts have left hundreds of ERRs without funding, even as the crisis around them deepens. To date, famine has been confirmed in 10 areas in Sudan, including the Abu Shouk displacement camp.

“You cannot imagine what it’s like right now,” says Salah Adam, a volunteer at the Abu Shouk ERR whom the Monitor first spoke to last year.

“Sharing food with people is deeply rooted in Sudanese culture,” he explained at the time. Now, however, there is little left to share.

Children often go from one day to the next without eating, he says, while their mothers search local markets for spoiled and discarded food to bring home. One such market in Abu Shouk was struck in the shelling of recent days, killing several people.

In many places, meanwhile, families are surviving on animal feed called ambaz, which is obtained from peanuts after their oil has been extracted. Once considered unfit for human consumption, it has now become a meal of last resort for many.

“The USAID suspension has created significant challenges,” says Waleed Khojali, a volunteer with the Khartoum State ERR, an umbrella body for groups in the capital.

He says that where he works, severe malnutrition is on the rise since the U.S. pulled its funding. The Monitor could not independently verify this claim, but the World Health Organization recently warned that several additional areas of Sudan are currently at risk of slipping into famine conditions due to ongoing food shortages.

Meanwhile, it is becoming more difficult to provide clean water to camps and neighborhoods, Mr. Khojali and Mr. Adam say, because volunteers can no longer afford diesel to run the machinery that pumps water out of the ground.

No end in sight

Sudan’s war is entering its third year with no clear end in sight. Although the army has now gained control of the northern and eastern regions of the country, including recently the capital, Khartoum, the paramilitary RSF is still in charge of the southern region and much of Darfur.

Sudan’s civilians continue to bear the brunt of the fighting. Over 12 million people – 1 in 4 Sudanese – have had to flee their homes. In total, experts estimate that somewhere between 20,000 and 150,000 Sudanese have died as a result of the war.

Meanwhile, generals of both warring factions have been accused of war crimes against civilians, including arbitrary killings and sexual violence. In January, the U.S. government sanctioned RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo for what it said was “ethnic cleansing” of non-Arab Sudanese in Darfur, which it also said constituted genocide.

In the midst of all this, Mr. Adam, the ERR volunteer in the displacement camp in Darfur, says he hopes that the Trump administration will rethink its cuts to aid. “The Sudanese people have always appreciated the kind gesture of America,” he says.

But in the meantime, ERR volunteers are not waiting. They are searching for other sources of funding, and stretching what they have as far as it will go.

“No matter what,” says Mr. Khojali, “our work must go on.”