For almost three years, Sudan’s networks of volunteer responders, known as the Emergency Response Rooms, or ERRs, have sustained communities through one of the most brutal and neglected wars of our time. What began as improvised neighborhood committees has evolved into a nationwide architecture of mutual aid that is redefining how humanitarian action can work.`

With more than 33 million people in urgent need as conflict devastates the country, these volunteers are running community kitchens, providing primary health care, evacuating civilians, repairing water systems, documenting abuses, and reconnecting families. They're doing so in a context where the state has collapsed, international access is severely constrained, and entire cities have become battlegrounds.

As one volunteer at one of Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms, Asim, told us from a heavily bombed town in South Kordofan:

“People wake up each morning not knowing if they’ll be able to find food or clean water that day. The sound of shelling is constant and the fear is ever present. Many families are displaced from their homes, while others are trapped in their neighborhoods without access to services. Most hospitals are no longer functioning and medicines and healthcare are very scarce.”

In these circumstances, humanitarian action is not a programmatic choice; it is an act of collective survival, and the impact of Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms. Asim and his colleagues distribute food baskets to families trapped by fighting, provide first aid in makeshift clinics, and transport the injured across active conflict lines. Many volunteers have been displaced, detained, or killed.

“All this work is done through self-organized volunteer efforts,” Asim explained, regarding Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms. “People cooperate and contribute whatever they can. Despite all the dangers, they continue. There is simply no alternative: If we stop, people will be left with nothing.”

Global recognition for this bravery has built steadily. Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms have twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and received major international awards.

As well as unlocking funding, these accolades signal that the world is beginning to understand Sudan’s volunteers are not auxiliaries to the international system; in many places they are the system. They are reaching neighborhoods inaccessible to international agencies and delivering assistance at a fraction of the cost.

Read the full article about Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms by Sara Pantuliano and Andrea Tracy at Devex.