When war broke out in Sudan in April 2023, the collapse of the state was immediate. Public services disappeared overnight, supply chains fractured and entire towns were cut off from formal humanitarian assistance.
Amid this rupture, the Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) were established. From a handful of local initiatives, a decentralized network of neighbourhood groups quickly spread across the country. Today, there are more than 700 ERRs operating in all 18 of the country’s states, mobilizing more than 26,000 volunteers to mitigate what has become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
This growth has not been centrally directed; it has been adaptive and rooted in community trust. The ERRs are sometimes seen as a successor to the Resistance Committees – the pro-democracy groups that emerged during Sudan’s revolution in 2018 and 2019 – but the reality is more complex. While some brought organizational experience from the revolution, the majority of ERR volunteers are doctors, teachers and community organizers from all parts of Sudanese society with no political history.
After the outbreak of war in 2023, these groups converged to fill the void left by the withdrawal of the state and international aid agencies, whose access was restricted by the warring parties, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. Crucial to the ERR volunteers’ initial success was their local knowledge and the levels of trust they already received in their communities. Over the past three years, these principles have helped build a model of mutual aid that is working in Sudan – it could also become a blueprint for other conflict zones, but only if the international aid system is willing to change its ways.
Closest to the crisis
Underlying the ERR approach is a simple but powerful idea: those closest to the crisis are in the best position to respond to it. In practice, this has meant developing creative approaches to delivering aid under extreme conditions.
In areas inaccessible to international organizations, ERR volunteers have built informal supply lines, negotiated safe passage across frontlines, and used local know-how to identify those most in need. This is dangerous work requiring enormous bravery from volunteers who are often as vulnerable as those they are helping. Since the fighting began, more than 161 have died while others have faced arbitrary detention, torture and forced disappearance.
Despite the risks, ERRs continue to operate across Sudan as the humanitarian situation worsens. Today, more than 33 million people – 65 per cent of the population – require humanitarian assistance, while 19 million face acute hunger according to United Nations estimates.
To meet these needs, ERRs aren’t just handing out aid, but ensuring communities have a role in shaping and monitoring how it is delivered. This decentralization is the system’s strength. Decision-making is spread out, allowing for speed and flexibility, while accountability is enforced through social proximity rather than bureaucratic procedure. In a case like Sudan’s, where formal institutions have collapsed, legitimacy does not come from a mandate, but from trust.
ERRs achieve this by doing away with a central command that dictates strategy from a distance. Decisions are made at the neighbourhood level by local ‘rooms’ who understand the immediate risks. While bodies such as the Localization Coordination Council enable the sharing of resources and reporting between different ERRs and local NGOs, they cannot veto what local rooms do. The interconnected nature of the council is also important as it ensures that if one group is cut off by a communications blackout, the rest of the network can carry on.
Funding their future
Yet the success of the model raises difficult questions. If the ERRs are, as some have argued, the closest thing Sudan has to a national connective infrastructure, what does their future look like? Can a network built in crisis become a long-term institution without losing its basic principles, including its responsiveness and local legitimacy?
In considering both questions, the issue of external support is unavoidable. Initially the ERRs were funded by the Sudanese diaspora and the tradition of nafir by which neighbours in Sudan share resources. As the war progressed, international NGOs began to recognize the ERRs as the only viable way of delivering aid and, as a result, offered them flexible micro-grants that bypass traditional bureaucracy. This has evolved into a sophisticated multi-stream funding model.
Funding now comes from a wide range of sources, including large donors such as the German Foreign Office and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and smaller consortiums which allow ERRs to deliver services to affected communities.
What ERRs need
Yet a challenge remains: how to fund the ERRs without undermining their effectiveness. First, the international system must recognize that it is not entering an empty space. The ERRs are a system that is already up and running successfully, which means they need to be reinforced rather than replaced. Support should prioritize flexible, long-term funding that can be absorbed and directed at the local level, rather than tightly earmarked, short-cycle grants that impose external priorities. Predictability is what helps a decentralized system function.
Second, there is a need to invest in what might be called the invisible infrastructure of mutual aid. Much of what sustains the ERR network – trust, communication channels, community accountability mechanisms – does not fit easily into traditional funding categories. Strengthening ERRs calls for the financing of coordination platforms, peer-to-peer learning across the country, and enabling the documentation of practices that can be shared, adapted and expanded. Some of these structures are already in place but need further support.
The use of ‘learning and reflection forums’, for example, has allowed volunteers from across the country to share both technical solutions and discuss the emotional impact of their work, from managing community expectations to dealing with burnout.
Third, the international system must be willing to learn from Sudan and reshape its practices. The ERR model challenges a number of assumptions: that scale requires centralization; that accountability must flow upwards rather than horizontally; and that risk can be managed through compliance frameworks. In Sudan, it is the opposite conditions – decentralization, community accountability and risk-sharing – that have allowed aid to reach people.
Among the most important assumptions to challenge is that effectiveness derives from control. In highly volatile environments, excessive control often slows response times and excludes those best positioned to act. Similarly, a fixation on visibility and branding – who is seen to deliver aid – can distort incentives and undermine local legitimacy. The ERRs are able to operate in hard-to-reach places because they are trusted by the community, not because they are visible to external actors.
Another assumption for reconsideration is the hierarchy of expertise. For decades, humanitarian knowledge has been codified and exported from global centres to local contexts. The experience of the ERRs suggests an alternative: knowledge generated through practice, under pressure and adapted in real time on the ground.