On April 15, fighting broke out in Sudan amid the collapse in relations between two generals who disagree on a framework to restore a civilian government after more than two years of military rule. The conflict has forced more than 100,000 Sudanese to flee to Egypt and other neighboring countries. The United Nations has warned of “a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis” amid calls for a cease-fire to safely deliver food, water and emergency supplies.
We hear from Sibongani Kayola, the Sudan country director for the Portland-based international aid organization Mercy Corps, which has been active in Sudan since 2004. She shares with us how the conflict has impacted Mercy Corps’ programs and relief efforts.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. We turn now to Sudan. According to the UN, more than 700,000 people have fled their homes since fighting broke out there less than a month ago. That’s on top of an estimated 3.7 million people who were already internally displaced. The new fighting is a result of a conflict between rival generals who disagree on a framework for restoring a civilian government after more than two years of military rule. Sibongani Kayola is the Sudan country director for the Portland based international aid organization Mercy Corps, which has been active in Sudan since 2004. She joins us now to talk about how the conflict is impacting relief efforts. Welcome to the show.
Sibongani Kayola: Hi, Dave. Thank you for having me.
Miller: Thank you for joining us. Can you give us a sense first for the work that Mercy Corps has already been doing, the work that’s been going on since 2004?
Kayola: Mercy Corps work in Sudan started shortly after the eruption of the Darfur crisis. Our work over the last 19 years has spanned humanitarian response, which involves supporting people in the immediate aftermath of crisis events through activities such as rehabilitating water infrastructure, providing cash transfers so families can access essentials that they need, construction and rehabilitation of educational facilities, health facilities, to long term developmental programs supporting macro level transformation. So for example, supporting smallholder farmers to increase their productivity, building the capacity of farmers to practice climate smart agriculture, and peace building, which focuses on promoting the involvement of women in preventing and mitigating violence and conflict.
Miller: Why women? Why is it that for peace building activities, the key is to empower women?
Kayola: Historically, women have been overlooked in peace building processes. Forming over 50% of the population, we recognize the important role that they play in the communities, and feel it is only fair for women to have a say in peace building processes. Part of our work focuses on building the skills of women to engage in dialogue at the highest levels, and also working with men to value the participation of women in peace building conversations.
Miller: So let’s zoom forward to the last three or four weeks. How did the outbreak of fighting in the capital Khartoum immediately affect your operations?
Kayola: Well, the first thing that we did following the news of the eruption of the crisis was to pause our operations, focusing primarily on safeguarding our staff, as well as the communities in which we work. We paused to make sure that our staff would not be at risk of being injured or hurt as they went about their work.
Once the pause was in effect, we tried quite quickly to make sure that our staff had the resources that they would need to access food and other necessities for the shelter in place instructions that were given.
Miller: How much of your operations were based in Khartoum?
Kayola: Our main office in Sudan is based in Khartoum, and accounted for 40 of our 128 staff across the country. Our office in Khartoum was the largest office, and it played a very important role administratively. That is where the majority of the senior management team, as well as myself, were based at the start of the crisis.
Miller: “Were based,” because you had to move?
Kayola: Yes. I have relocated to Port Sudan, which is in the northern part of the country. We left Khartoum about 10 days after the eruption of the fighting during an evacuation, because it was too dangerous to stay in the city.
Miller: So you and at least some members of your team are among the 700,000 people who have been internally displaced?
Kayola: Yes, that’s right. Some of our staff have also crossed over into neighboring countries such as Egypt.
Miller: I want to turn back to what this has meant for your staff, but obviously the whole point of Mercy Corps is to help others. What are the most pressing humanitarian needs right now for the communities that you’ve been serving?
Kayola: Our staff have been speaking to people primarily through phone calls, but also to their neighbors, to their relatives. And what is coming through is first and foremost the health needs that the population is confronted with at the moment. Across Sudan, more than two thirds of hospitals are not functional due to direct attacks or occupation by the fighting parties, lack of electricity, water, or fuel. This has left millions of people without health coverage. The situation is particularly dire for women and children, because they cannot access the health facilities that are so badly needed. We think of vaccinations for children, we think of pregnant women who are now being forced to deliver in very harsh conditions because of the lack of hospitals that they can go to.
The conflict has also caused massive damage to water infrastructure. Water stations and network pipelines are not functional, meaning people have to collect water from unsafe sources such as rivers. Prices have increased dramatically across the country for staple goods. There’s a shortage, and when you can find these goods they’re incredibly expensive. And our assessments have shown that even in places where there’s no fighting, such as areas like Gadarif, prices for a basic basket of goods has increased by an average of 41%.
Miller: Do people have access to money, even if they could afford the hugely inflated prices?
Kayola: It’s quite difficult to access cash at the moment, primarily because the banks have been closed since the start of the conflict. Some banks in some areas have reopened, but because the roads are unsafe, liquidity isn’t flowing as much as it would under normal circumstances. In some places, some people have been able to transact using banking apps for example. But due to network connectivity challenges, those are hit and miss, more or less. Some days, they work some days they don’t. So it’s a very difficult situation. And due to the fact that many organizations haven’t been able to pay salaries, many people are reporting that they have or will soon run out of financial resources to access food and other essentials.
Miller: How did you deal with that as an employer with dozens of in-country staff?
Kayola: It was and still is very difficult. In the immediate aftermath of the crisis, we mobilized quickly to make a small duty of care payment to all our staff. We had to be creative about how we facilitated the transfer of this amount to our staff. In some places, we had some cash in our safe in the offices, and we mobilized quickly to get team members to access that cash from the office. In places such as South Darfur where we have an office, we found a merchant in the local market who was willing to extend us a line of credit to provide this payment to our team members, and we were able to make that payment. And then for other staff, we were also able to find other merchants who were able to make digital transfers, and we paid back the merchants in cash. So a mix of ways.
Miller: That last part, finding merchants in different regions or different cities, it seems completely reliant on having meaningful and existing connections, relationships around the country. You could not do that if you didn’t already have connections.
Kayola: Absolutely.
Miller: I wanna go back to something you said earlier when you were talking about the variety of serious needs that exist right now, you mentioned that there have been direct attacks on some hospitals, problems with water infrastructure. Are hospitals or pumps or filtration systems being deliberately attacked?
Kayola: There’s a number of different actors in the current crisis, and it’s really hard to tell who’s responsible for what damage. The conflict started in Khartoum which is an urban area, and urban conflict is quite difficult in that people reside in many places. So it’s hard to say whether it’s deliberate. But what is certain is that residential areas where civilians live, where medical facilities are, have been attacked. And in the process, this critical infrastructure has been damaged.
Miller: I want to turn to agriculture because my understanding is that farmers in Sudan are just now getting into a crucial planting season. What challenges are farmers facing in particular right now?
Kayola: One of the biggest challenges is accessing financial resources to buy the seeds and tools that they need for the agricultural season. For us as an organization for example, in the second and third week of April, we were due to partner with private sector actors to host seed fairs and other fairs where the smallholder farmers that we work with could come to access inputs that they needed for the farming season. Due to the current crisis, that didn’t happen.
One of the challenges as well is that the companies that we worked with to provide these resources have had to flee as well because of the insecurity in Khartoum. Even though some of the entities that we work with did have agents in some of the states that we work in, the volume of seed and inputs that are required to get through the farming season is insufficient. So the disruption of the supply line to Khartoum is going to pose a serious challenge in terms of access to farming inputs for the next season.
Miller: It seems like that could have dire consequences come harvest time in terms of food availability.
Kayola: Absolutely, and not just at harvest time, but also for the year ahead. Prior to the start of this crisis, 11.7 million people needed food assistance. And so if we have one missed agricultural season, it means this number is going to rise even higher.
Miller: The World Food Program halted its operations there when three of its aid workers were killed in the fighting. How do you think about risk when the benefits that your aid workers could provide are also gigantic?
Kayola: All humanitarian organizations, including the UN at the moment, are facing incredible challenges and unpredictable insecurity. So from one day to the next, it’s really difficult to tell which area is safe and which area is unsafe. We’ve seen aid shipments and offices looted consistently over the last couple of weeks, and it’s a really hard line to walk because we want to protect our staff, but we also want to provide assistance to communities. And so in order for us as humanitarians to provide the much needed support at the moment, we need all parties to uphold international humanitarian law, and guarantee us safe access to our supplies, to the communities that we serve.
Miller: Have any Mercy Corps workers come under attack over the last month?
Kayola: Thankfully, all our staff remain safe. We can account for all our staff, and we continue to track them on a daily basis. It’s very difficult because many have been forced to flee to safer places, and so we’re dispersed across the country and outside of the country and in different locations.
Miller: You mentioned earlier when talking about the work that Mercy Corps has been doing helping farmers become more climate resilient. How has climate change, just in the last couple years, exacerbated the situation in Sudan?
Kayola: There have been successive seasons of failed rains or delayed rain, shorter rain seasons. And this unpredictability has affected the ability of farmers to be productive generally. And so as an organization, our work focuses around promoting climate smart agriculture by providing farmers with drought resistant seeds for example, or flood resistant seeds, preparing and anticipating extreme weather events such as floods. We work with private sector actors and provide early warning to farmers about weather patterns during the agricultural season. These are some of the activities that we implement to ensure that farmers can anticipate the weather related challenges that will be prevailing as a result of climate change.
Miller: In your previous job, you were the country director of GiveDirectly Liberia, and as the name of the NGO basically says, it was about direct cash payments to people in need. How did that experience shape the way you think about effective aid?
Kayola: That experience for me really was life changing, because it brought home the dignity that everybody deserves when it comes to decision making. In this sector, we tend to make a lot of assumptions about how people will reuse resources that they are given. And the evidence overwhelmingly shows that people are responsible, poor people are responsible. One of the lines that reverberates in my head every day is poverty is a lack of cash, not a lack of character. So empowering people with resources and giving them the freedom to make decisions about what to prioritize works. We need to empower communities with resources and allow them to make decisions about what works best.
Miller: Does that basic philosophy, which is a profoundly different way to think about humanitarian aid than especially a lot of Western based groups have practiced it for decades, does that change at all in the middle of a crisis? Or does it still hold true?
Kayola: Absolutely, it still holds true. For us as an organization as well, multipurpose cash assistance forms a very large part of the work that we do. Giving people the financial means to make decisions. In a crisis context, there’s an additional layer of nuance in that markets could be disrupted. And so even though people have the financial resources, if the goods and services that they need are not available in the market, then it’s difficult for them to make use of those financial resources, or their choice is restricted to what is available in the market. And so for Mercy Corps, working to develop market systems is an important part of our work as well, making the investments to ensure that even in times of crises, markets remain functional. And the markets and crises framework is a very strong part of our work as an organization. And so we work on both sides of this problem, giving people the resources that they need to access goods and services, but also making sure that markets can continue to function in crisis situations.
Miller: And people can buy food or necessities or seeds or fertilizer or whatever.
Just before we say goodbye, I’m curious what your long term concerns are right now for Sudan, taking the longer view?
Kayola: At the start of this crisis, humanitarian needs were already at record levels, following the coup in 2021 the negotiations that were going on for the new government were really oriented towards putting the country back on the path to civilian leadership. And in many circles, the hope was that this would put the country back on the path to recovery. The current crisis has really taken the country back quite significantly. The needs that are going to arise from the current crisis are going to compound the needs of the Sudanese people. From the 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan, the total dollar value for the humanitarian response was 1.7 billion. And up to the start of this crisis, only 200 million had been funded. Moving on from this, the cost of bringing Sudan back to a point where we’re able to support everyone, it’s going to be a long journey, and it’s going to require significant financial resources.
Miller: Thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate it.
Kayola: Thank you so much for having me.
Miller: Sibongani Kayola is the Sudan country director for the Portland-based Mercy Corps.
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