MORE THAN 3 YEARS OF WAR
MILLIONS DISPLACED
RISK OF FAMINE
You can help.
Sudanese volunteer networks, known as the Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), are delivering lifesaving aid to millions of people caught in conflict.
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Humanitarian crisis in Sudan: What is happening?
Sudan is facing the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe. More than three years of war has left 33 million people urgently needing humanitarian assistance, and 11 million people remain displaced from their homes. The conflict has also resulted in extreme hunger and the spread of preventable disease, including cholera and measles. Fighting continues to result in death, destruction of essential infrastructure, and lost livelihoods for families across the country.
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Who is fighting?
The conflict in Sudan broke out in April 2023 between two previously aligned factions of the military—specifically the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—and is perpetuated by involvement from international actors. Smaller armed groups also take part in the conflict. Civilians have experienced human rights abuses, including gender-based violence, torture, and death. In January 2025, the Unites States concluded that a genocide is ongoing in Sudan.
Who are the ERRs, and why do they matter?
Photo credit: Lynsey Addario
The Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) are community-led volunteer networks that emerged in response to the conflict in Sudan. Made up of Sudanese citizens, many of them young people, the ERRs organized locally to meet urgent needs when formal systems collapsed. They coordinate support across neighborhoods and regions, identifying needs, mobilizing volunteers, and delivering assistance quickly and transparently. Because they are embedded in the communities they serve, ERRs can reach people and places that international agencies often cannot. This grassroots model is grounded in Sudan’s long tradition of mutual aid, inspired by the principle of nafeer, meaning “collective action” in Arabic. It reflects a culture of solidarity and self-reliance, with Sudanese communities leading their own humanitarian response.
Latest News
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Echoes of Solidarity Issue #22
This special edition of the ERRs’ self-produced monthly newsletter highlights their third consecutive Nobel Peace Prize nomination, alongside previous notable recognition. It also highlights some of the ERRs’ latest and most impactful assistance activities.
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Rethinking Humanitarianism Podcast: Grassroots aid is here to disturb the system
The ERRs’ own Hajooj Kuka talks about the ERRs in the context of a global movement to bring humanitarian response back to the grassroots level.
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![Photo by volunteer, Tawila camp]()
Biden and Trump Called It a Genocide and Then Turned Away
NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof continues to call attention to the atrocities facing civilians in Sudan, especially women and girls, and calls upon world leaders convening in New York for the UN General Assembly to hold those perpetuating the conflict accountable.
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Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition on Podcast St. Martin's Cloak
Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition founding member and Proximity2Humanity Executive Director Andrea Tracy spoke on the podcast St. Martin’s Cloak about the origins of the ERRs and their lifesaving work, the women’s response rooms, the impacts of aid cuts on Sudan and globally, and more.
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South Kordofan: Local Aid Workers Killed as Attacks on Civilians Intensify
May 14, 2026: Fighting in South Kordofan results in the death of ERR volunteer Sara Ahmed and others.
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Sudan’s emergency groups are the future of humanitarian aid, not a stopgap
Op-ed by P2H Executive Director Andrea Tracy and Friends of Mutual Aid Advisory Council member Sara Pantuliano on the importance of the ERRs and why locally-led response needs to be a bigger part of humanitarian aid going forward.
How You Can Help
Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition (MASC) was created to make it possible for global supporters to give directly to Sudanese responders leading life-saving work on the ground. When you donate through MASC, your support goes directly to the ERRs.
Funds are managed by Proximity2Humanity (P2H), a non-profit founded by experienced humanitarians. Meet our team here and our Advisory Council here. P2H combines deep relationships in Sudan with proven expertise in managing and verifying programs in complex environments. Learn more at Proximity2Humanity.org.
MASC is committed to channeling funding for mutual aid that is:
Direct: Funds go straight to frontline responders without added layers.
Cost-effective: $0.95 of every $1 reaches local actors.
Fast: Funds typically reach communities within two weeks.
Our Recent Impact
Babanusa | What Remains of Life
For two years, war was the only sound in Babanusa. The city was emptied of its people, its infrastructure destroyed, and its hospital left among the ruins.
After the fighting stopped on December 1, 2025, residents slowly began returning to a city that no longer resembled the one they had left behind.
Amid the ruins, volunteers from the Babanusa Emergency Response Rooms returned to rebuild the hospital.
But they are not simply rebuilding a hospital. They are rebuilding a place where people can be born, treated, healed—and where a city can begin to breathe again.
Because when the doors of the hospital open once more, it is not only a hospital coming back to life.
It is Babanusa.
A city returning, one life at a time.
In 2023, war forced Shaimaa Babiker, a single mother of four, to leave Khartoum and begin again in Kassala. Displaced from her home and uncertain of what lay ahead, she found a new sense of purpose in an unexpected place: volunteering with the Kassala Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs).
Through Shaimaa’s story, the film offers an intimate glimpse into the quiet strength of communities living through crisis. Inside the Kassala ERRs, displacement becomes a shared experience, and strangers become a support network. As Shaimaa helps others navigate the same uncertainty she had faced, the film reveals how, in the midst of war, people create their own spaces of solidarity, dignity, and belonging.
Footage of the local Emergency Response Room response to support internally displaced people in Khazan Jadid village in East Darfur.