Sudan Emergency Response Strategy

On April 15, 2023, armed conflict erupted across Sudan with fighting concentrated in the capital, Khartoum, and in cities across the Darfur and Kordofan states. An estimated 4.7 million people have been displaced within the country, or fled across the border to neighboring Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, and Libya. Roughly half the country’s population—24.7 million people, more than half of whom are children—require humanitarian assistance. The conflict has taken a heavy toll on infrastructure, which has suffered damage in the fighting, and further limited people’s access to water, health care and other goods and services.

The crisis in Sudan requires a well-coordinated, rapid and robust humanitarian response to save lives, reduce suffering, build resilience, and support social cohesion and peacebuilding. CRS and our local partners address both urgent and longer-term needs. CRS has served communities in Sudan since 1978, with a focus on supporting the most vulnerable populations, conflict-affected communities, and internally displaced families in Khartoum. CRS works with local and international partners to implement programming in some of Sudan’s most hard-to-reach areas across the five Darfur States, with plans to expand to eastern Sudan. CRS has nearly 200 national staff, and works with seconded staff from the state ministries of health to implement emergency health and nutrition projects in West and Central Darfur. Given people’s holistic needs, CRS takes a comprehensive approach in providing assistance, including health and nutrition, water and sanitation, food security, livelihoods, natural resource management and peacebuilding.