As Europe’s governments survey Sudan’s bitter and brutal civil war, they can be forgiven for seeing few immediate opportunities for diplomatic breakthroughs. The conflict looks grimly intractable, and other actors like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United States already fill what space there is for negotiations. But Europeans can have greater positive impact by drastically expanding their support for the country’s civil society. Strengthening this is vital to the medium- and long-term prospects both of an end to the war and of a durable peace. In a state scarred by years of poor governance, it will take intensive Sudanese civilian activism to champion any sort of just and lasting resolution to the conflict, repair the social fabric, and build a participatory government responding to the needs of a long-suffering population.

The grassroots, community-level coordination and mobilisation of a diverse set of dissenting groups that led to the ousting of the ruling National Congress Party of Omar al-Bashir may have emerged seemingly overnight, but in reality, this movement took years of planning, organisation, and dialogue to develop and cultivate. While the majority of this work was indeed grassroots in origin, long-term EU and US programming to strengthen civil society in the preceding decade provided integral and consistent long-term funding and technical capacity.[1] Similar needs apply today. It falls to international partners to:

• provide immediate dedicated support to the Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) and soup kitchens that continue to do the preponderance of dangerous humanitarian work keeping Sudanese alive under famine-like conditions;
• support the cultivation of an inclusive, representative, apolitical civilian bloc to provide a viable political alternative to the two belligerents;
• and build the longer-term roots of a healthy, active Sudanese civil society to underpin governance systems during the precarious years to come.

Since the start of Sudan’s war in April 2023, some assistance has already been provided to these groups, but that support has not yet arrived in the volumes necessary. However, prioritising robust support of Sudanese civil society support is a viable policy priority for the European Union to help alleviate Sudan’s humanitarian catastrophe. It would also be a tangible demonstration of Europe’s insistence that Sudan’s military actors should not be returned to power in a post-conflict phase. The limits to this support to date have been part of a reluctance to send funding into a violent and uncertain context where community, neighbourhood, and civic groups are often unregistered or too nascent to have any visible record of impact, good practice, or handling of funds.

Nonetheless the role of civil society in driving Sudan’s inspiring 2019 revolution and the emergence of ERRs, soup kitchens, and other mutual aid bodies providing food, medical, and mental health services in the war has highlighted the resilience and powerful capacity of civil society to shape the country’s direction. Additionally, the efficiencies of such local delivery of humanitarian assistance relative to those of large international agencies are manifold. In 2024, mutual aid groups received just 0.2 per cent of direct funding for humanitarian assistance, while doing the vast majority of relief work.

Civil society was harassed and brutalised during protests before the fall of Bashir and after the 2021 coup that swept away the two-year-old transitional government. Now, it is under direct threat during the war from belligerents suspicious of its activities and embarrassed at its delivery of the very services that they purport to deliver to the population as ruling entities. However, both the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) recognise the inherent, underlying strength of civil society in Sudan.[2] This is a double-edged sword: those powers fear the ascent of a more participatory government but have also understood that they cannot govern without popular consent.

Even in the unlikely event that Sudan’s population forgives the uncountable and venal battlefield abuses committed by both sides, the belligerents themselves are ill-equipped to put the country back together socially or economically given their historical embrace of divisiveness and kleptocracy. Their instincts for division and theft will only be strengthened by a post-conflict context in which the challenges of economic recovery and battles over the country’s remaining resources will leave little space for cooperation between armed actors.

A key goal of the EU’s more robust support for Sudanese civil society would be the development of inclusive civilian blocs to steward a cohesive civilian response to the war. To date, civilians have found little space at the few high-level peace dialogues that have emerged. The best-known of these blocs, the Sudanese Coordination of Civil Democratic Forces (or Taqaddum), has not yet afforded sufficient space to apolitical civic voices and has been dominated by political parties overly focused on securing a place for themselves in a negotiated Sudanese power structure.

Making large-scale support to civil society a core component of EU policy towards Sudan requires greater flexibility from existing funding mechanisms, and an approach that privileges a long horizon on such support. The bloc should take encouragement from the measurable impact of its prior backing to Sudanese civil society as a clear contributor to the momentous 2019 revolution. Specifically, this support should include heightened legal protection, monetary, technical, and in-kind support; not least to mutual aid groups doing lifesaving work in often unimaginable conditions. Further backing is needed not just in Sudan, but also in Chad, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, and other states where Sudanese civil society has already established offices and communities.