Humanitarian network in Sudan could collapse within weeks, UN agencies warn

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - GENEVA — The United Nations warned on Monday that a key system for bringing aid into conflict-torn Sudan risked collapsing completely unless it receives more funding immediately.

“The entire humanitarian system could collapse within weeks if we don’t act now,” said Amy Pope, head of the International Organization for Migration. “Without new funding, we won’t be able to get help where it’s needed most.”

Aid groups are struggling with funding shortfalls after the Trump administration cut billions of dollars in foreign assistance to UN agencies and charities over the past year. Other major donor countries have also cut aid budgets, citing tight finances and higher defense spending.

Carl Skau, the acting executive director of the World Food Programme, said funding for Sudan has fallen by about ​half this year, as war drives more people into hunger while the regional crisis raises prices and aid budgets plummet.

The war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that erupted in April 2023 has killed more than 200,000 people, aid workers estimate, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis.

The IOM stressed that the Common Humanitarian Pipeline logistics system it runs allows a network of more than 100 national and international NGOs to bring desperately needed shelter and other non-food aid into the African country.

Since the start of the war, it said, the system had reached 2.84 million people.

But it warned that the reach had been shrinking due to falling funds, even as the needs remain at an all-time high.

While the pipeline helped get aid to more than one million people in 2024, only 330,000 had received assistance like shelter and emergency support kits through the system so far in 2026, the IOM said.

“Without immediate donor support, current shelter, sanitation and emergency household relief items are expected to be depleted by the end of September,” the UN’s migration agency said in a statement.

“The warehousing and operational capacity that keeps the pipeline functioning can only be sustained until December 2026,” it stressed.

The IOM said it would need $15 million just to maintain the pipeline at its 2026 minimum capacity for the next 12 months, while it would require $42 million to return to its 2024 level.

It said cutting off access to shelter assistance carried far wider risks.

“Prolonged exposure to weather, disease and insecurity can heighten risks of gender-based violence, family separation and eviction in overcrowded sites,” it pointed out.

“Shelter is the foundation from which protection, health and recovery can begin,” Pope insisted.

“When the pipeline stops, it is not simply warehouses that become empty. The entire humanitarian response becomes harder to deliver.”

Speaking from the Darfur region after a trip across the country, WFP's Skau said while access had represented humanitarians’ largest obstacle in the past, now “we have (a) presence that we are not fully utilising because of the lack of funding.”

The gap to sustain current operations was just short of $300 million, he said.

“This year, we’re about half what we were in terms of funding last year,” Skau said. Last year, the agency received $645 million, but almost three-quarters into this year, funding is only ‌at $206 million.

Almost 20 million people face hunger in Sudan, but budget cuts have forced the agency to focus efforts on the 5 million most in need, of whom it has recently scaled up to reach 4 million people.

But WFP, the UN’s largest by budget, is forced to make difficult decisions.

In Tawila, North Darfur, the makeshift home to about 1 million people, the agency is able to reach everyone monthly but with only a half ration that covers two weeks’ food, Skau said.

“It’s not ⁠clear how they really are surviving the other two weeks,” he said.

In El-Obeid, the central Sudanese city where about 1 million and counting ‌have sought refuge since the start of the war in April ​2023, the agency is only able to provide help ‌to those who arrived in the past several months.

“We are providing, but less and less. A year ‌ago it was better because of resources,” Skau said.