The People Behind Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms: Radical Community Care Amidst Global Failure

Leila Isa with Rachel Elliman

An interview with Alsanosi Adam, the external communications coordinator for the ERRs, discussing decoloniality, community-based approaches, and the situation in Sudan. 

Looking beyond the internal struggles within Washington, the single most devastating impact of this Trump Administration has been the slashes to USAID. In a decade unfolding to be marked by the proliferation of civil war, the climate crisis, and refugee movements, this gulf between humanitarian need and the international supply of humanitarian aid has plunged war-torn populations into further destitution. The failure in Sudan perhaps best exemplifies this gap. 

Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms (ERR) are a radical alternative to this failed top-down model of aid. The ERR is a deeply localised form of mutual aid. The ERR function through unpaid volunteers to provide community-based humanitarian care, praised as an ‘embodiment of a decolonised humanitarian model, where decision-making and implementation lie in the hands of local communities’. 

Diego Deslo, a Mundari women in Southern Sudan, 2024, via Wikimedia Commons

“Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms (ERR) are a radical alternative to this failed top-down model of aid.”

Post-independence Sudanese history has been marked by coups and conflict. The recent devastating round of fighting can be traced to the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir. After the popular Sudanese Revolution in 2018, the military was compelled to oust al-Bashir from power. Instead of transitioning to civilian rule, the country descended into war amid an internal power struggle between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), previously the Sudanese Arab militia, the Janjaweed, and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). 

Since the outbreak of War in April 2023, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, many more wounded, and an estimated 12 million people have been displaced.  Famine has gripped the country, according to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), Sudan risks becoming the “world’s largest hunger crisis in recent history’, with an estimated 21.2 million people currently facing acute hunger. 

The ERR have roots in the resistance committees of the 2018 popular democracy protests. Since 2023, Sudan’s ERR has transformed into an aggregate infrastructure of neighbourhood suppliers of food aid, clean water, medical care, education, and evacuation services. 

The ERR initially functioned through grassroots crowdsourcing, then grew with diaspora donations and grants from international charitable foundations. As of December 2024, the ERR have provided community services to over 11.5 million people. The ERR have nearly 10,000 volunteers across the 18 states of Sudan. WhatApp ‘rooms’ have become the new hub for national organisation. 

Photo: MutualAidSudan.Org

Amidst the almost comprehensive collapse of the Sudanese state, the EER has become an alternative welfare structure holding together local communities, with over 700 now operating throughout Sudan.

Their work has been increasingly recognised internationally. In 2025, the ERR received the Rafto Prize for their "courageous work to preserve the most fundamental human right- the right to life”. The ERR was nominated for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize and won the 2025 Chatham House Prize.

After a Cambridge Centre for Governance and Human Rights panel, with CU Amnesty International, we interviewed Alsanosi Adam, the external communications coordinator for the ERRs, discussing decoloniality, community-based approaches, and the situation on the ground in Sudan. 

Professor Sharath Srinivasan and Alsanosi Adam during the CGHR and CUAI discussion with the ERR Delegation. Credit to Tamami Ono, by kind permission of the Provost and Scholars of King's College, Cambridge

Could you give us a sense of how Sudan’s ERRs operate on the ground, what services they provide, and what community structures do they fill amidst the complete collapse of the Sudanese state?

Sudan’s ERR rely on community coordination—the smallest community is 15 members, the biggest would be up to 200 people. These people have working groups that are appointed by merit. Adjacent to these you have representatives or councils who act as a small parliament with checks and balances, and separations of operationa. These emerged due to the huge gap in services after the collapse of the state; people had to come together to fix the water, for example. The benefit of this is that there was always a structure, the community, and the EERs are built on this. Participants could be anyone, the imam, doctor, teacher, singer—you can join at the level of your locality. Since the ERR are composed of the people themselves, they are resilient across war and migration. This created some sense of stability and support.

What is the longer history of the ERRs? The Resistance Committees of the Sudanese Revolution in 2018 were, in some ways, an early iteration of the structures of the ERR; to any meaningful degree, can the ERRs be said to continue this community-focused democratic spirit? 

There is a longer history of this very democratic form in the Resistant Committees [from the 2018 Sudanese Revolution]. [Within the ERR] Most decisions are made by people reaching a consensus, if something is contested, it goes to a vote—but usually it does not go there, facts are analysed, costs and benefits accounted for, and people will come to a decision. The decision-making is not about “well we have decided”, it is about providing for the community and learning from the actions that are taken.

The glue of the ERR is the charter: the charter says that we are an apolitical, non-partisan solidary committee which enables our humanitarian work and for accountability to be in place. If the ERR were political, it would be built upon pragmatism. Whereas for the ERR, everyone is able to move in the same direction despite their differences. The ERR embody the practice of public service in its rawest form, away from political interest.

We continue to be apolitical, while internal alliances may form, people are still able to remember themselves as a community action group held by the people.

What are the conditions like for the local volunteers at the ERRs? There have been reported cases of ERR volunteers being abducted, tortured, raped, and killed by both of the warring factors; has the threat continued, or even worsened, amidst the international attention the ERRs have drawn?

The safety of the volunteers is crucial. The fact that the EERs are apolitical contributes to their safety, but volunteers still get targeted by authorities and de-facto authorities in different areas of control. The risk is always present. People who stay are often targeted; civilians are accused of being collaborators and spies for the opposite faction. It is very important for the solidarity movement to remain apolitical because of this. The two camps are getting bigger; there are less and less people who remember that the actual enemy is the war. This is why we are trying to create a space which considers Sudan first, peace first, and peaceful coexistence.

International recognition provides the organisation with more protection. The same way that the Red Crescent is protected because it is recognised, the increased international recognition of the ERR increases their protection. International human rights and the humanitarian awards we have received contributes to the safety of the volunteers on the ground because there is the sense that the world is watching and that there will be repercussions if they are targeted.

How far can the ERRs be said to be a ‘revolutionary’ or decolonial model of aid? How could the existence of such grassroots government structures play a role in peace and rebuilding in the future of Sudan? 

The decolonisation of humanitarian aid is a concept that is very interesting, and I think we are doing this by taking the agency of communities as central, however, the funding is still coming from external sources.

In terms of peace, the model of the well-attended meetings where everyone can speak, often organised through Google Meets, coordinated through Whatapp, is radical. No matter where they are from, everyone can share their own experiences. This builds solidarity. It builds peace, that is, the possibility of peaceful coexistence despite all the grievances. There can be reciprocated in the rest of the community; there is no alienation, people are working together to support each other in solidarity.

Post the cuts to foreign aid by Trump earlier this year, what does the future of the ERR look like?

The aid system was relying too heavily on the US: 80% of the funding was from the US and when this stopped, this created a 77% deficit between our need and what we could supply. However, this cut made other donors step up to fill the gap. These are big shoes to fill, but there is solidarity shown from other private and international funders.

The aid system was built upon the sole pillar of the US. The humanitarian world is now aware of this overreliance and are thinking about diversifying their funding because these cuts were so devastating. We all need to think about how to leverage this moment of crisis to be more effective and plug local networks into this moment of reform.

What do you think international humanitarian organisations can learn from the Emergency Response Rooms? Can this localised model complement the existing system?

ERRs are an area-based coordination, not sector-based, meaning you have funding allocated to a community, and then the community will decide what to do with it. What is most important is aid is organised by area and community and not by sector. When aid is sector-based, that creates the need for so many expats—it gets complicated. When you do it by area, the community will source out cost-effective ways to provide services to people while you can still report to your donors. Aid does not have to be provided by foreign technocratic expats—food can be provided to a community kitchen for three months, then aid can be shifted to pharmacies, to evacuations—to whatever and wherever it is most needed.

Africa still has everything that these international organisations came to fix, we still have malaria, hunger, and disease. The aid system is broken and it must be redesigned to complement local agency and need. It needs to be redesigned, if not thrown away with altogether. 

We need a revolution in the aid sector to renegotiate how it is done. Communities need to sit at the table, co-create, and innovate. There is a lot of unlearning that needs to happen.