Emergency response rooms are finding innovative approaches to providing rapid assistance to millions facing war in Sudan.
Teams of volunteer medical staff, engineers and other emergency experts across the country are addressing civilian needs amid the current bout of violence and insecurity stemming from clashes with rival military forces in April 2023.
So far, ERRs have reached more than four million civilians, bucking bureaucracy and finding innovative solutions.
UN News met with three young volunteers who visited UN Headquarters in New York to attend meetings with officials and actors in the humanitarian field.
The goal is simple: reach those facing the risk of death, famine, disease and difficulty obtaining drinking water, electricity and communication services.
Needs are great
Needs are great, they said. The ongoing conflict has led to the departure of humanitarian agencies, collapse of state institutions and interruption of basic services in large parts of the country amid soaring civilian casualties and large-scale displacement.
More than 7.4 million people have been forced to leave their homes in search of safety within and outside Sudan.
Operating in states across the country, ERRs function like a “local emergency government”.
Youth-led emergency response rooms expanded after the outbreak of war in Sudan to fill the vacuum created by the departure of international humanitarian organizations.
‘Filling a vacuum’
After the outbreak of war, Hanin Ahmed, a young Sudanese activist with a master’s degree in gender and specializing in peace and conflict, founded an emergency room in the Omdurman area with one of her colleagues.
She and her colleagues visited UN Headquarters to, among other things, shed light on the Sudan issue, which she said does not receive enough attention despite the catastrophic deterioration of the situation on the ground.
“We are united by humanitarian work and the sense of responding to the repercussions of war and helping people,” she told UN News.
The emergency rooms contribute to filling part of the vacuum left behind when international humanitarian organizations left, Ms. Ahmed explained.
Each initiative enjoys intense community participation by young people of all political orientations, she said, highlighting some of their success stories, from assisting victims of sexual violence to providing pathways to safety.
“Through our youth networks and our personal relationships, we were able to open safe corridors to evacuate citizens from neighbourhoods under attack and take them to shelter centres,” Ms. Ahmed said.
“We are proud of that.”
“But, we face theft and are exposed,” she said. “Young people are targeted, arrested and killed while they work in very difficult conditions.”
A simple, practical structure ‘away from bureaucracy’
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