Reclaiming political agency: The transformation of Emergency Response Rooms from response to influence
When the war broke out in Sudan, Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), born out of the Neighbourhoods Resistance Committees (NRCs), subsequently became a lifeline for local communities caught in the fighting. This shift enabled a broad, unified network that achieved remarkable results on the ground.
At the same time, by sustaining everyday life in war zones, this work also helped keep the war’s economy going, ultimately prolonging the conflict and adding to civilian suffering. Faced with the urgent task of saving lives while navigating a complex security situation, these ERRs drifted towards the ‘Couch Party’ model; actors who have given up their political agency in favour of responding to events rather than shaping them.
This blog aims to analyse this shift and call upon ERRs to reclaim their agency and transform their humanitarian work into a strategic tool that supports peacebuilding and weakens the war.
Traditionalists versus the new humanitarians in Sudan
Traditional (Dunantist) humanitarian action is based on neutrality, impartiality, and independence. It focuses on short-term relief and saving lives without intervening in the political or economic dynamics of the conflict. Since the war erupted in April 2023, humanitarian efforts by both local and international actors have largely followed this ‘Dunantist’ model, focusing on ‘a bed for the night’ humanitarianism. Despite the politicised nature of the conflict, humanitarian groups have worked hard to present themselves as neutral and non-aligned. By avoiding ties to any side, they reduce the risk of being targeted by combatants.
The ERRs are a good example of this approach. Although their origins are linked to the NRCs, which had clear revolutionary and political agendas, they adopted neutrality as a functional necessity. This enabled them to manage health centres and communal kitchens (Takaya) within neighbourhoods under the direct control of the warring parties. The commitment to neutrality allowed volunteers to move through active combat zones and deliver basic essentials to people trapped by fighting.
Although their origins are linked to the NRCs, which had clear revolutionary and political agendas, they adopted neutrality as a functional necessity.
In contrast, proponents of ‘New Humanitarianism’ argue that traditional humanitarian action is incapable of dealing with contemporary civil wars, where military, political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions intersect. From this perspective, humanitarian action inevitably has political consequences and cannot be understood as an abstract technical act.
In the Sudanese context, one of the most dangerous revelations of the war is the structure of the ‘war economy’, which has pervaded every pore of Sudanese society. A study published in October 2023 indicates that the cost of transporting food has risen by 250% due to the imposition of illegal levies and taxes at checkpoints. Here, humanitarian aid is transformed from a means of saving people into benefits over which militias and military forces compete. This ethical and practical dilemma is evident in field reports documenting how relief routes have turned into indirect channels for financing the warring parties. For instance, drivers transporting aid for the World Food Programme reported paying up to $4,000 in levies and transit fees to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia to move a truck from the Chadian border into Darfur. Through this mechanism, humanitarian action can unintentionally sustain the war economy by generating revenue for armed groups.
ERRs: The ‘Couch Party’ trap and the complexities of relief
ERRs emerged based on a long heritage of Sudanese popular solidarity, such as the practices of ‘Nafeer’. The majority of their founders are active cadres within the NRCs, which granted them a unique capacity for horizontal organisation and rapid access to local communities in the absence of the state services. Since the outbreak of the war, these rooms have evolved from online chat groups into organisations managing essential services across most regions of Sudan.
Despite this success, the rooms adopted the principle of neutrality to unify their politically diverse members and facilitate field operations. However, this neutrality led to two primary problems. The first resulted from their relationship with the NRCs; perceptions were formed by the warring parties and some of the communities they serve regarding their political agendas and agency. This affected their full access to all affected persons and more dangerously, made them targets for the warring parties. Volunteers have been subjected to systematic kidnapping and ransom demands by the RSF, which used these funds to finance its operations (the war economy). They also faced security harassment and arrests by military intelligence on charges of ‘collaboration’ and other allegations. The second problem is that neutrality led the rooms to underappreciate the political and economic dynamics of the war into their reading of the situation. Consequently, their interventions sometimes contributed to alleviating financial pressure on the controlling parties through the war economy—especially the RSF militia.
From reaction to strategic action
Escaping the ‘Couch Party’ trap requires liberating humanitarian work beyond immediate relief and rebuilding it as a socially and politically conscious practice. Reclaiming political agency does not mean narrow politicisation or entering political polarisation; it means recognising that every humanitarian intervention has political and economic effects, and that ignoring them allows the strongest, most violent, and best-organised actors to benefit. ERRs should therefore develop a form of ‘New Humanitarianism’ suited to their nature and context.
First, this transformation requires stronger internal institutionalisation capable of confronting a complex war, a violent economy, and networks of armament, financing, and looting. Without losing their grassroots spirit, ERRs need clearer structures, transparent decision-making, stronger coordination, and improved monitoring and evaluation across all levels.
Second, humanitarian response must be built upon an integrated contextual analysis that deconstructs the political, economic, and security structures producing and reproducing need. The war is currently functioning to redistribute power, resources, opportunities, and deprivation. ERRs must therefore analyse the war economy, informal financing, checkpoint levies, territorial control, changing local markets, and smuggling and looting networks, so they can place their work within the wider and deeper context. This requires specialised data collection and analysis that links community-level information to wider trends in markets, routes, territorial control, and conflict dynamics.
Such knowledge should support ‘smart intervention’ by improving prioritisation, risk assessment, identification of affected groups, and the design of interventions aligned with community interests and ERR agency. In this vein, humanitarian interventions should produce dual impact: immediate relief from hunger, thirst, disease, and displacement, and long-term progress towards peace, stability, and development. ERRs that provide food, health care, and relief can also support agriculture and vocational training, helping communities build livelihoods that are more independent of violence, extortion, and artificial scarcity. Relief can thus become an entry point for a ‘peace economy’. As people's opportunities for work, production, and safe exchange increase, their vulnerability to recruitment, blackmail, and dependency on militias and war networks decreases.
Finally, ERRs should place sustainable livelihoods at the heart of their interventions. Communities dependent only on emergency aid remain trapped in permanent waiting, while those given tools for production and stability gradually regain agency and become less vulnerable to exploitation. Supporting economic activity independent of the war economy is therefore a strategic priority, especially in high-value agriculture, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), local-production supply chains, transport, communications, and sectors able to reintegrate youth and women into productive activity. ERRs can also support vocational training, technical qualification, cooperatives, and small projects that strengthen self-reliance and create tangible interests in security and stability. This approach goes beyond assisting civilians to changing the calculations of war itself. When communities possess real economic interests in stability, and when livelihoods expand beyond the logic of looting, smuggling, extortion, and armed mobilisation, the cost of war rises while the cost of peace decreases for those actors benefiting from the conflict, thereby contributing to peacebuilding.
With their social legitimacy, trusted local networks, and field experience accumulated under the harshest conditions, ERRs can combine humanitarian, civic, political, and developmental action. They cannot do so, however, without reclaiming political agency and understanding the structures producing the tragedy. The choice is not between humanitarianism and politics; humanitarian action becomes more effective when informed by political awareness and aligned with the interests of the people and peace.
This Sudanese Perspectives blog post is written by Amro Awad Ali Osman. He is a development researcher focused on Sudan’s development challenges, with a particular interest in long-term institutional and social reform
The views expressed in this post are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the SNAC project or CMI.
