More than three years after its outbreak, Sudan’s deadly civil war still rages, fueling one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
More than 150,000 people have been killed, 14 million more have been displaced and 33.7 million people – more than two-thirds of Sudan’s population – are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, the Red Cross reported in July.
But international humanitarian organizations are struggling to reach those in need. In their absence, community-run emergency response rooms stepped in, providing food, clean water, medicine, community kitchens, health clinics and trauma counseling.
The Community Initiatives Network is listed as a potential winner by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), which annually publishes a list of five deserving potential winners.
“In light of Ukraine and Iran and all these big geopolitical wars, the war in Sudan may end up a bit on the back burner, but it’s a war that involves a lot of the dynamics of the Middle East with the rising conflict around the Red Sea,” says Haakon Gjerløw, acting director of PRIO.
Alsanosi Adam, a volunteer and one of the spokespersons for the emergency response rooms, told the Guardian last year: “You risk everything from intimidation to death. From torture to death – and everything in between.”
The network comes from the Sudanese tradition of “Nafeer”, meaning “collective call to action”, and first developed during the upheavals of 2018 and the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the humanitarian organization Save the Children.
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