The Humanitarian System at a Turning Point: Lessons from Sudan and South Sudan, draws on the experience of the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF, South Sudan) and the Conflict Sensitivity Facility (CSF, Sudan) – together with interviews with 27 experts and practitioners – to ask what these two contexts can teach global policymakers about the future of aid. It focuses on practical examples, context-based lessons and potential steps towards more transformative change.  

The paper explores key dilemmas that the aid system in both countries have experience over decades which are taking on a new meaning in a context of rapidly contracting foreign assistance, including the politics of humanitarian assistance, the challenge of sustainability, the need to reinforce local agency and the tension between humanitarian neutrality and solidarity.  

Aid contraction is playing out differently in Sudan and South Sudan, which are contrasting test cases – Sudan as a site of prioritisation and piloting of locally led response, and South Sudan as a case of eroding donor confidence. This poses serious conflict sensitivity risks as aid contraction reshapes power relations, dependency and incentives for cooperation or violence. 

Finally, the paper examines pathways for transformative action, drawing on peacebuilding approaches, systems thinking and more dynamic processes. It concludes with five overarching recommendations to facilitate key steps towards this. 

While the contraction of international assistance forces difficult choices, it also creates and opportunity to re-anchor humanitarian action in the capacities, relationships and solidarity that endure beyond external intervention. Whether this moment leads to meaningful transformation will depend on the extent to which reform efforts are willing to confront the political nature of aid, redistribution power in practice rather than rhetoric and reimagine the system in ways that are grounded in the realities of those it is intended to serve.  

Read the full report here.