The situation in Sudan, characterized by ongoing conflict and increasing requirements, presents a challenge for humanitarian efforts. A substantial number of individuals are in need of sustenance, healthcare, refuge, safeguarding, and other essential provisions, concurrently experiencing a significant deficit in financial backing for humanitarian organizations.
Among these organizations are those headed by women and focused on women’s rights, which collaborate directly with the populations affected by the crisis. These entities typically operate in close proximity to those most severely impacted by the hostilities, delivering vital assistance to women and girls, addressing community emergencies, and attending to needs that might be neglected in broader humanitarian interventions.
A decrease in financial support has the potential to impact, and in reality does impact, a far greater group than solely the entity that experiences the funding reduction.
Sudan’s Humanitarian Crisis Continues to Grow
Sudan conflict’s spiraling human and protection crisis, 15 Nov. 2023 The Sudan conflict, which broke out in April 2023, has led to a tragic humanitarian and protection crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced and face hunger, violence, poverty, and lack of access to basic life-saving services.
When war breaks out, women and girls face a higher risk of displacement, poverty, violence, and lack of access to healthcare or nutrition, especially when essential services break down.
Aid organizations are crucial for supporting those affected. Yet they are struggling to respond to increasingly desperate demands with fewer resources. For many NGOs, that translates into tough calls about which program can be continued, how many people they can help, and how long they can continue to deliver that help.
Why Women-Led Organizations Matter
Women-led organizations are often deeply connected to the communities where they work.
They understand local needs, cultural realities, and the challenges women and girls face in their everyday lives. This local knowledge can be extremely valuable during a crisis.
Their work may include:
- Protection services
- Support for survivors of gender-based violence
- Healthcare
- Psychosocial support
- Food and emergency assistance
- Community outreach
- Legal and social support
- Support for displaced families
Because many of these organizations are locally rooted, they may be able to reach people and understand their needs in ways that larger organizations cannot always achieve.
They are not simply delivering services. They are often part of the communities they are supporting.
What Happens When Funding Is Cut?
A funding cut can have a much larger impact than simply reducing an organization’s budget.
For an NGO, it may mean fewer employees, shorter programs, fewer community visits, or the closure of an important service.
For communities, it can mean something much more serious.
A woman who previously had access to psychosocial support may no longer have somewhere to seek help. A displaced family may lose access to community assistance. A girl facing protection risks may have fewer services available to her.
This is why the impact of funding cuts cannot be measured only in dollars.
The real question is
How many people lose access to essential support when the funding disappears?
The Growing Importance of Local Humanitarian Action
Sudan also highlights the importance of locally led humanitarian response.
International NGOs and humanitarian agencies have an important role, but local organizations often bring something that cannot easily be created from outside: trust.
They understand local communities, languages, relationships, and changing conditions on the ground.
They can often identify emerging problems quickly and adjust their response accordingly.
But local organizations cannot be expected to carry this responsibility without proper support.
They need reliable funding, trained staff, security resources, organizational support, and strong partnerships.
Supporting local organizations should therefore be seen as an investment in the wider humanitarian response.
Aid Cuts Are Also a Gender Issue
Funding decisions can affect different groups in different ways.
Women and girls already face barriers to healthcare, education, economic opportunities, and protection. Conflict can make these challenges even more severe.
When programs supporting women and girls are reduced, existing inequalities can become worse.
This is why funding for women-led organizations should not be treated as a secondary issue.
If these organizations lose the resources they need to operate, the humanitarian response may become less accessible to the people who need it most.
Why Flexible Funding Matters
Another important issue is how humanitarian funding is provided.
Short-term grants can help organizations respond to immediate needs, but they may not provide enough stability for long-term work.
Women-led organizations may need to maintain staff, rent offices, strengthen security, train volunteers, manage administration, and respond to unexpected emergencies.
Flexible funding gives organizations more room to make decisions based on what is happening in their communities.
Longer-term funding can also help them plan beyond the next few months instead of constantly worrying about where their next source of support will come from.
For organizations working in an unpredictable conflict environment, this flexibility can make a major difference.
What Donors Can Do
Donors have an important role in keeping women-led humanitarian organizations active.
Rather than focusing only on large international organizations, funding systems can create more opportunities for smaller and locally led groups.
Donors can consider providing:
- Longer-term funding
- Flexible grants
- Core organizational support
- Faster emergency funding
- Simpler application processes
- Capacity-building support
- Security and staff protection resources
- Stronger partnerships with local organizations
The goal should not simply be to fund individual projects.
It should also be to strengthen the organizations that are already working within affected communities.
What This Means for NGOs
The funding crisis also teaches a vital lesson for the NGOs in any sector. Those who work at the country level in humanitarian response should consider financial resilience, partnerships, and future-planning strategies. Building partnerships with other NGOs can open up avenues to technical and financial support, decreasing dependency on a single funding donor.
Similarly, NGOs should meticulously document their achievements.
If they are able to articulate what their activities have been and justify their existence to donors and partners, they will have more leverage. However, the duty of resolving the overall crisis must not lie solely on the shoulders of NGOs operating at the local level; it must be a shared one between donors, governments, international institutions, NGOs, and other involved entities.
Humanitarian workers are also facing serious risks.
There is another side to the crisis that is sometimes overlooked: the people delivering humanitarian assistance are also working in dangerous conditions.
Aid workers in Sudan face serious security risks while trying to reach communities in need.
For women-led and local organizations, these risks can be particularly challenging.
Funding is therefore needed not only to provide services but also to help organizations protect their staff, maintain secure operations, and continue working safely.
A humanitarian organization cannot effectively support communities if its own workers do not have the resources and protection needed to operate.
The Bigger Question for International Aid
Sudan raises an important question for the future of humanitarian funding:
What happens when humanitarian needs continue to rise while funding continues to fall?
Organizations may be asked to reach more people with fewer resources. But there is a limit to how much efficiency can compensate for a lack of funding.
Eventually, fewer resources can mean fewer services, fewer staff, and fewer communities reached.
That is why the discussion should not only be about making humanitarian programs more efficient.
It should also be about making sure that the right organizations have the resources they need to continue their work.
Women-led organizations should be part of that conversation.
Supporting Women-Led Organizations Means Supporting Communities
A women-led organization is not only a beneficiary of the humanitarian funding.
They are actively participating.
They know their own people/community, respond to their own specific needs, and address specific problems concerning women and children. Supporting them could bring more widespread influence on family and community. Health care, protection, cash assistance, psychosocial support, and access to networks for women mean spillover benefits to whole families/communities. Therefore, investment in women-led organizations is critical not just from a gender lens but also from a humanitarian perspective.
Final Thoughts
This is not just about dollars and cents; these cuts can spell the difference between essential services remaining available or becoming inaccessible for women and girls in Sudan, between local organizations continuing or having to shutter their doors, and between communities receiving the support they need now versus later. Local women-led organizations are already delivering crucial aid in a tremendously challenging environment and could potentially be diminished during a time of increasing needs.
There isn’t a magic answer of just more funding. Humanitarian assistance could also be more accessible, flexible, predictable, locally led, and more flexible for the organizations that are most engaged with local communities, said humanitarian leaders involved in the appeal to increase local funding. “For both governments and those international organizations working in Sudan, helping these organizations to succeed is the same as an investment in greater humanitarian impact because the aid those local communities have the resources to provide then continues through the journey to recovery for the people affected, not only for today,” concluded 26 Tanzanian women human rights activists.
