Sudan

Overview

While the operational context in 2025 is expected to remain challenging, partners will continue to exert all efforts to maintain and expand their physical presence and to increase their capacity to respond and reach vulnerable populations. In addition to the conflict, challenges with regard to security, rule of law, bureaucratic impediments and armed group dynamics will add to the complexity of the operational environment for partners to deliver humanitarian assistance and services. As humanitarian needs rise, partners aim to strengthen local partnerships, enhance community response capacity, and expand their physical presence.

Planning Assumptions

Without a political solution, Sudan's situation will likely worsen in 2025, with rising inflation deepening economic hardships and increasing the cost of the humanitarian response. Sudan will face continuing humanitarian needs, with access hindered by bureaucratic hurdles imposed by the parties to the conflict. Displacement will likely continue at scale, and potential cross-border movements from eastern Sudanese states to Ethiopia may be likely in the event of an expansion of the conflict to Gedaref and Kassala. Conflict will likely continue in Aj Jazirah, Darfur, Khartoum, North Kordofan and Sennar. Those states not directly experiencing conflict in 2025 – such as Red Sea or River Nile – may see the expansion of the conflict, and a continuation of the deterioration of the local economy. Alternatively, frontlines between both parties may shift west, resulting in new population movements, and possibly renewed access to areas heavily affected by recent hostilities.

Operational Capacity

In 2024, partners have gradually re-established the physical presence in Sudan that existed before April 2023, overcoming challenges to resume operations in eastern Sudan and parts of Darfur. Efforts in continuing to scale up physical presence will continue in 2025. INGO and UN partners will continue to rely on national staff and NNGO partners to reach vulnerable populations in areas that are difficult to access, such as Darfur, Aj Jazirah and Khartoum states, where international staff presence is extremely limited or inexistent. Given ongoing access and operational constraints, the 2025 plan focuses on strengthening local partnerships and advancing localization to reach hard-to-access areas. These partnerships will ensure the effective delivery of critical services where international staff presence and access remain limited.

In 2025, 60 international NGO partners, 13 UN agencies, 91 national NGO partners and three international organizations will be working together to implement the Sudan response plan. Reliance on and partnerships with local partners and Mutual Aid Groups will persist and likely grow with constrained access in areas like Khartoum. The scale up of inter-agency common hubs in Atbara, Zalingei, Kassala, Kadugli and Kosti will continue, access and security conditions permitting.

Access Constraints and Challenges

Access to humanitarian services and assistance remains extremely challenging and unpredictable. Insufficient field presence and incomplete humanitarian coordination structures severely hamper the humanitarian community and its response in those areas that have the highest levels of humanitarian need, vulnerability and protection issues. Expanding the UN presence, alongside national and international NGOs, will enable UN agencies to monitor aid delivery, ensuring assistance is meeting needs and reaching intended recipients, and strengthen “protection by presence” approach. Expanded humanitarian field presence would facilitate dialogue with uniformed personnel, community leaders, and influential tribal or local administrations, promoting strong relationships to ensure adherence to humanitarian principles and accountability in cases of suspected violations across Sudan.

A one-year period in Sudan can be divided into two parts; the rainy season where physical constraints such as floods and damaged infrastructure present major logistical and physical access challenges, but subdues the fighting capacity of the parties to conflict, and the dry season where increased humanitarian movements and, as seen in 2024, military operations are possible.

Bureaucratic access restrictions are common in both SAF and RSF-controlled areas. Travel permits or movement notifications are frequently delayed or withheld for crossline and cross-border transport, causing delays and cancellations that prevent aid convoys from reaching those in need.

The Humanitarian Access Working Group (HAWG) will build on its 2024 efforts to analyze access challenges and provide timely recommendations to the HCT to guide strategic decisions and advocacy. This work relies on more systematized humanitarian access reporting across Sudan in alignment with OCHA’s global access monitoring and reporting framework (AMRF). OCHA is prioritizing making the means of reporting to AMRF more comprehensive, inclusive and simple, with relevant, useful analysis of trends and clearer feedback loops on the actions taken to resolve and address reported challenges. The Access Severity Overview methodology will be reviewed to complement the access situation overview presented by the AMRF, with periodic snapshots of how humanitarians rate access constraints, state by state.

Response Trend

An average of 9.3 million people were reached with some form of humanitarian assistance between 2020 and 2024. In 2023, out of the 18.1 million people targeted in the HNRP, 45 per cent were reached by the end of the year. In 2024, 87 per cent of the 14.7 million targeted were reached with some form of humanitarian assistance as of 30 November, an average of 2.5 million people reached over the past few months of 2024. Different levels of funding, insecurity, and access constraints continued to pose challenges to the humanitarian response in 2024.

For more information about the response monitoring, see the Sudan Response Dashboard.