Sudan Between Relief and Development: How Did Aid Turn into a Permanent Trap?

Omaima Abdullah

Since 2015, my travels to the regions of Kordofan, Darfur, and Blue Nile were regular and continued intensively until less than a month before the outbreak of the recent war.
During those years, I was not a visitor or a passerby, but rather a witness to many details of daily life, a participant in establishing several development projects in those areas, close to the people, and immersed in their reality.
This experience allowed me to examine one of the most complex Sudanese issues: how the displacement crisis evolved from an emergency into a permanent reality.
Sudan’s problem in the Darfur region worsened over time until it reached an unprecedented stage of crisis. Scarcely a single state in Darfur is without an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp; indeed, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.
These areas were known for their immense natural and human resources and for their inhabitants’ engagement in agriculture, herding, and trade. However, internal armed conflicts, accumulated crises, and the ongoing war in the Darfur and Blue Nile regions became primary factors in the delay of development. The war greatly impacted the local economy, drained human capital, and caused villagers to abandon their villages.
The accumulation of crises and the successive governments’ perpetual postponement of major issues led to an expansion in the circle of conflicts, some of which took on a tribal character. Armed movements proliferated, displacement camps multiplied, and the city peripheries became fragile agglomerations.
Questions about stability and development remained perpetually unanswered. Solutions were superficial, failing to address the root cause of the crisis: settling through agreements or negotiations or distributing posts, amidst a loss of trust between partners and a multiplicity of armed actors.
Since 2003, Sudan’s border crossings, borders, and airports have never been closed to international aid. The problem was never a shortage of humanitarian intervention, but rather its nature. Since the crisis began, all camps have continuously received support, relief, and aid from international organisations. These organisations succeeded – indeed, they played a vital and decisive role in keeping people alive there. They succeeded in mitigating famine and providing health services, playing an undeniable and significant role. However, they did not enable people to return to their villages and homes.
Relief has been constant, yet those areas remain stuck in the crisis loop, with the circle of conflict widening.
As the years passed, aid ceased to be a temporary response and turned into a permanent way of life. The behaviour of thousands in the camps changed. Over time, they shifted from production to receiving aid from international organisations, while development faltered and progressed slowly under successive governments in Sudan. This contrasted with the many who refused to remain in the camps.
The question that confronts us is: Why has relief always been present, while development and stability have been absent?
This shift in productive behaviour disrupted people’s lives in the camps and generated new crises. They remained prisoners of the camp prison, which limited their ability to devise solutions for their return. Rather, their lives transformed from a temporary emergency imposed by the region’s internal war into a permanent way of life. Thus, humanitarian aid and assistance became the management of the internal displacement crisis, without providing a solution.
Through my visits to the region, I used to follow the development of children from an early age until adulthood inside IDP camps, amidst a degrading environment and miserable, intermingled shacks of tin and straw, which made people there live like one large family with no privacy.
The question is: how can those young men begin their lives outside the camps when they go out to work, given their weak educational background and limited job opportunities?
The persistent fragility in the communities there greatly increased the unemployment rate. With the ease of access to weapons, young people were left with no choice but militarisation and joining militias. When job opportunities are nonexistent, militarisation becomes the option for earning a livelihood. A human being, in any case, needs to have something to occupy them and work to accomplish.
The current war has obliterated what little stability remained, yet the atmosphere and border crossings remain open. So, where is this aid that international organisations speak of and for which they request a ceasefire in the ongoing war?
A bundle of questions: Do we in Sudan need to change the concept of relief and humanitarian aid?
Which is more important for rebuilding Sudan anew: relief or development projects that enable people to return to their villages and cities?
Does all donor money go to those who need it, or do organisations end up spending a large portion on the administration, upkeep, and security of employees and workers?
In 2007, the hybrid military mission UNAMID (African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur) was established under Chapter VII, supposedly to establish peace in Darfur.
This mission lasted for 13 years and was then dissolved in 2020. Approximately $20 billion was spent on this mission. The budget went towards soldiers’ salaries, ground and air transport, and security protection.
That $20 billion was not money for development or for building an economy. Yet, the mission did not end the conflict nor bring peace.
The question is: what if such money had been spent on empowering people with life and development, and on building the region’s economy?
Yes, security comes first, but development comes directly in second place.
After the war, we need to thoroughly review the concepts of relief and aid. We need to return people to their original homes, build productive villages, empower people to rely on themselves, and permanently close the file on internal camps.
We need to end the crisis, not manage it. We need stable lives for families, not relief that merely keeps people alive. We need to help them restore their lives and provide development projects for them.
The continued reliance of large sectors of the Sudanese on relief without a clear horizon for development is, in truth, a continuation of the crisis in different forms.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=12927