Sudan’s war, which began in April 2023, has entered its fourth year at a time when the country faces the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with some 33.7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in 2026, according to OCHA, and there is no coherent humanitarian and political framework in place to match this scale of need. This brief, which is based on practitioner experience, argues that two shifts now define the crisis more than most policy analysis admits: first, humanitarian aid cuts are not only reducing assistance but narrowing the response itself, forcing agencies into triage while pushing more of the burden onto underfunded and underprotected Sudanese community networks; second, the termination of UNITAMS has deepened an already fragmented diplomatic landscape by removing the main multilateral structures that linked political engagement, peacebuilding, and wider humanitarian coordination. The reality in Sudan is that civilians are not being affected only by the war, but by international retrenchment. This policy brief calls for a more realistic and politically informed response built around three priorities: protect and directly finance local response systems, rebuild a credible but lighter political-contact architecture that can support humanitarian access and civilian protection without waiting for a grand national settlement, and move from conference pledges to disbursements and accountable burden-sharing for Sudan and refugee-hosting neighbors.
Photo Credit: UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency
