The Conflict Sensitivity Facility - Sudan

30/05/2026

The report is careful not to frame this as a question of effectiveness. Women-led organisations are already delivering under difficult conditions. The issue is the environment they are operating in.

Funding remains limited and often unpredictable. Security risks are high, particularly for women in visible roles. Access to coordination and decision-making spaces is restricted.

These are not background challenges. They shape what is possible, where, and for how long.

Read the full analysis:

A UN Women gender alert examines how Sudanese women lead humanitarian response and local peacebuilding while facing systemic exclusion, funding gaps, and escalating protection risks.

29/05/2026

One of the most striking parts of this report is how it reframes the role of women-led organisations.

Rather than treating them as an add-on to the system, it shows how they are often the ones holding it together, especially in areas where formal structures are weak or absent.

They are delivering aid, organising locally, and mediating tensions. Yet they remain largely outside the spaces where decisions are made.

That disconnect runs through the entire report.

Read the full analysis:

A UN Women gender alert examines how Sudanese women lead humanitarian response and local peacebuilding while facing systemic exclusion, funding gaps, and escalating protection risks.

23/05/2026

One of the most important messages in the publication is that environmental response in Sudan should be grounded in Sudanese experience.

The research draws on literature, interviews and focus group discussions with Sudanese and international experts and stresses the importance of locally led collective approaches.

Environmental peacebuilding cannot be imported as a generic model. The way communities understand land, resource access, and environmental harm is shaped by local histories and conflict dynamics. If those perspectives are not centred, environmental programming risks becoming another layer of external design in a context that already suffers from weak accountability.

Read the full research paper:

A research paper examining how environmental pressures, resource competition, and climate stress intersect with conflict dynamics, peacebuilding, and recovery efforts in Sudan.

21/05/2026

Sudan’s humanitarian crisis is profound, which partly explains why environmental issues receive less attention than they should. Yet this paper argues that deprioritising the environment creates its own risks, because environmental pressures have short-term consequences as well as longer-term implications for recovery.

This matters for humanitarian actors because environmental harm can shape access to livelihoods, movement patterns, and local conflict dynamics. When these pressures are ignored, response planning may treat symptoms without recognising the conditions that continue to produce vulnerability.

The challenge is therefore not to shift attention away from immediate needs, but to understand how those needs are being shaped by the environmental realities around them.

Read the full research paper:

A research paper examining how environmental pressures, resource competition, and climate stress intersect with conflict dynamics, peacebuilding, and recovery efforts in Sudan.

16/05/2026

يُعدّ العيش معاً بسلام جزءاً من قدرة المجتمعات في #السودان على الاستمرار وسط ضغوط النزاع. ففي كثير من المناطق، لا يقوم التعايش فقط على المبادرات الرسمية، بل على تفاهمات يومية هادئة تساعد الناس على إبقاء سبل الحياة مفتوحة، حتى في أصعب الظروف.

قد يخفف اتفاق بين رعاة ومزارعين من التوتر حول الأرض. وقد تحافظ علاقة تجارية في سوق محلي على مساحة للتواصل بين مجموعات يدفعها النزاع نحو التباعد. وقد يتدخل وسيط محلي في الوقت المناسب لمنع خلاف محدود من التحول إلى انقسام أوسع. ورغم أن هذه الترتيبات قد تبدو بسيطة أو غير رسمية، فإنها تؤدي دوراً مهماً في حماية النسيج الاجتماعي والحد من تفاقم التوترات.

ويهم ذلك الجهات الفاعلة في مجال العون الإنساني لأن المساعدات لا تدخل إلى فراغ، بل تصل إلى مجتمعات ترتبط فيها سبل العيش، والعلاقات الاجتماعية، ومصادر الثقة، وموازين القوة بطرق معقدة. لذلك، فإن الاستجابة التي تفهم هذه الروابط تكون أقدر على دعم الثقة والتماسك المحلي، بينما قد تؤدي الاستجابة التي تتجاهلها إلى زيادة الضغط على علاقات مجتمعية هشة.

بمناسبة ً_في_سلام، تسلط وحدة حساسية النزاعات الضوء على أهمية العون الإنساني المراعي لحساسية النزاعات، والذي يبدأ بفهم دقيق للعلاقات المحلية، خاصة في وقت يزداد فيه التركيز عالمياً على الثقة، والحوار، والشمول، والمصالحة.

للاطلاع على المزيد، يمكن قراءة ورقة وحدة حساسية النزاعات: لماذا يهم الاعتماد المتبادل بين المجتمعات؟، والتي تناقش كيف يسهم التعاون المحلي في دعم التعايش في السودان، وما الذي يعنيه ذلك للجهات الفاعلة الدولية في مجال العون الإنساني.

اقرأوا الورقة كاملة من هنا 👇
https://csf-sudan.org/knowledgehub/why-community-interdependence-matters-how-international-aid-can-support-local-resilience-and-co-existence-in-sudan-535.html

16/05/2026

Living together in peace is part of everyday survival in , where coexistence often depends on the quiet agreements that allow communities to keep life moving under pressure.

A farming agreement can lower tension over land. A market relationship can keep contact open between groups that may otherwise be pulled apart by conflict. A local mediator can stop a dispute from becoming a wider rupture. These arrangements may look informal, but in many places they carry the weight of social stability.

For aid actors, this matters because humanitarian assistance enters these relationships and can alter them, even unintentionally. A response that understands local interdependence is better placed to support trust, while a response that overlooks it may place pressure on fragile community ties.

On the , CSF highlights the importance of conflict-sensitive aid that begins with a careful reading of local relationships, especially in a moment when global attention is centred on trust, dialogue, inclusion and reconciliation.

A relevant CSF publication to link is Why community interdependence matters, which explores how local cooperation supports co-existence in Sudan and what this means for international aid actors.

Read the full publication here 👉 https://csf-sudan.org/knowledgehub/why-community-interdependence-matters-how-international-aid-can-support-local-resilience-and-co-existence-in-sudan-535.html

14/05/2026

Natural resources in are often discussed through the language of extraction or livelihood pressure, but they also sit at the centre of peacebuilding.

This CSF publication highlights how competition over resources has shaped conflict locally and nationally, while access to Sudan’s resources continues to attract external interest that can either undermine or support peace efforts.

Read the full research paper:

A research paper examining how environmental pressures, resource competition, and climate stress intersect with conflict dynamics, peacebuilding, and recovery efforts in Sudan.

13/05/2026

Sudan - The report makes a quiet but important shift. It does not position -led organisations as part of a support structure. It shows how, in many areas, they are the structure, particularly where formal humanitarian systems are limited or absent.

This challenges a long-standing assumption that response is something delivered to communities. In practice, much of it is already organised within them.

The tension the report highlights is not about capacity. It is about recognition. Those delivering the response are not consistently included in shaping how it is designed or supported.

Read the full analysis:

A UN Women gender alert examines how Sudanese women lead humanitarian response and local peacebuilding while facing systemic exclusion, funding gaps, and escalating protection risks.

11/05/2026

Three years into the war in , most analysis still gravitates toward systems. Displacement figures, service collapse, funding gaps. This report shifts focus without abandoning that reality. It looks at what those systems mean in practice, and more specifically, how women are living through and responding to them.

It shows how the conflict has disproportionately affected women and girls, while also documenting something that is often treated as secondary. Women are not only navigating the crisis, but they are also actively sustaining parts of the response to it.

The result is not a simple narrative of vulnerability or resilience. It is both unfolding at the same time and often in the same spaces.

Read the full analysis:

A UN Women gender alert examines how Sudanese women lead humanitarian response and local peacebuilding while facing systemic exclusion, funding gaps, and escalating protection risks.

07/05/2026

Environmental issues in can easily be pushed into the category of long-term recovery, especially while the humanitarian crisis remains so severe. The problem is that this separation does not reflect how the conflict is actually experienced.

The publication shows how environmental pressures were already increasing before the current war, shaped by weak governance, climate stress and the consequences of insecurity. It also shows how competition over resources such as land, oil and gold has influenced conflict dynamics at different levels.

For aid actors, the point is practical. Environmental harm affects how people move, how livelihoods change and how tensions form around scarce resources. A conflict-sensitive response therefore needs to read environmental pressure as part of the operating context, rather than as a separate technical issue.

Read the full research paper:

This report aims to foster a greater understanding of how the environment interacts with conflict and peace in Sudan. Its findings illustrate...

24/04/2026

Local solidarity has been a defining feature of ’s humanitarian landscape. Neighbourhood groups, diaspora networks and informal organisers have filled gaps in service delivery during crisis. Examining these structures helps clarify how international support can better reinforce, rather than unintentionally undermine, community-led response.

Read the full paper by Mazin Abdallah here:

The CSF, hosted by Saferworld, was established in 2021 to support the aid sector in Sudan to be more conflict sensitive. We provide analysis, convene discussions, share learning, and support capacity focused on those issues of greatest priority for the sector. Together we are building a movement for...