Sudan’s humanitarian response differs greatly in practice from what funding data describes.

For more than three years of war, mutual aid groups, such as community groups and the Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), have fed neighbourhoods, kept water flowing and moved people to safety, often in places international agencies cannot or will not reach.

This community level is where some of the most critical response actually happens. However, the international system measures its support at the point where money leaves the funder. What reaches these mutual aid groups, when and at what cost, goes almost entirely unrecorded.

That opacity is not neutral. Each organisation in the funding chain sees only one step in each direction, so no intermediated grant can easily be traced from end to end. The considerable losses after the last reported transfer fall on the mutual aid groups themselves, which are least able to absorb them, and these losses appear in no one’s accounts.

This brief examines the funding architecture on which all mutual aid groups depend, drawing on significant evidence from mutual aid groups themselves. It recommends practical actions donors should take now.

Report by the Overseas Development Institute