HRP Strategic Objective 1

Provide timely multi-cluster lifesaving assistance to crisis affected people to reduce mortality and morbidity

HRP Strategic Objective 2

Mitigate protection risks and respond to protection needs through humanitarian action

HRP Strategic Objective 3

Improve vulnerable people’s access to livelihoods and life-sustaining basic services (paused until situation allows resumption)

HRP Strategic Objective 4

Support the implementation of resilience solutions to reduce the drivers of the needs (paused until situation allows resumption)

RRP Strategic Objective 1

Support host countries to ensure access to territory and asylum for all individuals in need of international protection, in line with their situation, and in compliance with the principle of non-refoulement and of the civilian and humanitarian character of asylum.

RRP Strategic Objective 2

Support host countries to provide timely and life-saving protection and humanitarian assistance for all those fleeing Sudan, with a specific focus on the most vulnerable and those most at risk.

RRP Strategic Objective 3

Identify persons with specific protection needs and in vulnerable situations and provide specialized protection interventions and other services.

RRP Strategic Objective 4

Support neighbouring countries to ensure access to their territory for third country nationals and assist, in close coordination with embassies and consulates, third country nationals with immigration procedures and in contacting respective consular authorities to enable them to return home to their respective countries of origin.

Situation Overview

On 15 April, fighting erupted in Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Fighting quickly expanded to other areas of the country. Since April 15, nearly a million people have been displaced, including 730,000 people within the Sudan, and over 200,000 in neighboring countries. Despite the Jeddah declaration of Commitment to Protect the Civilians of Sudan of 11 May, hostilities show little signs of abating.

Inside Sudan

The conflict has primarily unfolded in densely populated urban centres. The heart of the conflict lies in Khartoum, with devastating consequences, to neighbourhoods, critical buildings, and essential infrastructure.

Rockets, bombs, planes, and other types of explosive weapons are killing and wounding civilians and damaging infrastructure critical for access to water and medical care. Both groups have been using explosive weapons in populated areas, causing hundreds of civilian casualties and damage to critical infrastructure including hospitals, water treatment plants, and power plants. Heavy air attacks and clashes were witnessed in several major Sudanese cities.

Widespread displacement is reported, adding to the 3.7 million prior internally displaced persons (IDPs). A recent outbreak of intercommunal conflict in West Darfur has further exacerbated the crisis.

Civilians have been caught in the crossfire and face targeted attacks, included reported instances of sexual and gender-based violence. Ongoing violence has caused extensive damage to infrastructure, leading to water shortages, blackouts, communication disruptions, and incidents of looting. The sudden armed conflict has had a profound psychosocial impact on civilians, particularly in urban areas where such violence is uncommon. The emotional and psychological distress experienced by the affected population has been significant, adding to the overall toll on their well-being.

During the peak of the fighting, numerous hospitals in Sudan were affected. With the conflict in Sudan in its third week, Sudan’s health sector is on the verge of collapse. Power shortages, limited medical supplies, and infrastructure damage severely hamper hospitals’ ability to deliver essential care. If the conflict persists, acute food insecurity could impact up to 19 million people in the next 3-6 months. The destruction of critical infrastructure, such as water systems and communication networks, has severe implications for the people in Khartoum in particular. Water shortages, blackouts, and communication disruptions compound the challenges communities face in accessing essential services and information.

In Refugee-hosting Countries

Displacement into neighbouring countries has continued to increase, with 220,000 refugees and returnees already seeking safety in Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, CAR, and Ethiopia. Most people fleeing Sudan are Sudanese refugees and refugees of other nationalities. A smaller number are South Sudanese and Chadian refugees returning to their home countries in adverse conditions as well as a number of third country nationals and migrant returnees.

These countries are already hosting large refugee and internally displaced populations and their humanitarian programmes remain severely underfunded. Moreover, those leaving Sudan are arriving in remote locations in countries of destination and access to them is often difficult. Hosting countries will need additional support to provide protection and critical life-saving assistance.

The new arrivals are crossing the borders in vulnerable conditions and require immediate humanitarian and protection assistance. Initial assessments show that the most urgent needs are water, food, shelter, health, cash assistance and core relief items. In South Sudan and CAR, onward movement away from border areas is a logistical and financial challenge. In many of these countries, the rainy season is approaching and will make the delivery of aid more difficult.

Protection priorities include supporting local authorities to register new arrivals and identify individuals at high risk, especially women and children who are often unaccompanied or separated. Efforts are needed to address gender-based violence, provide specialized services for children, and raise awareness about the risks of trafficking and sexual exploitation and abuse. Psychosocial support and community-based mechanisms for communication, risk identification, and referrals are crucial.

Trade and supply chains, in the host countries, have been disrupted, causing inflation, and increasing the cost of the humanitarian response. This secondary impact of these crises has added hardship for vulnerable host communities, and could fuel tensions between refugees and host populations and destabilize the entire region. If a political solution to the crisis in Sudan is not found, the entire region could be destabilised, leading to further outflows.

Partners developed this response with concerned host governments. It builds on the collective and coordinated work already being done in these countries and promotes an area- and needs-based approach.

Response Strategy

Sudan and neighbouring countries have a rich and varied landscape of local and national actors with decades of experience in humanitarian action. These actors are particularly important to improving the effectiveness and quality of the response. Women-led organizations are often the first to respond to the needs of their communities at the onset of crisis, and providing essential services to women, girls and other marginalized groups. Refugee-led organizations will be supported to identify, design and implement project ideas that address the challenges refugees and returnees face.

Partners will rapidly scale up by establishing hubs for staff and supplies as close as possible to people in need, negotiating air bridges and cross-border modalities, and working to rapidly access and deliver assistance to those most in need, with the centrality of protection being a commitment by all humanitarian actors.

In doing so, partners will:

  • Ensure accountability to affected populations, by making programming decisions and actions responsive to the expressed priorities, needs, capacities and views of all people supported by these plans, and that refugees, returnees, IDPs, and other affected populations are actively involved in the planning, implementation and monitoring of the response throughout the programme cycle, including through reinforced complaint and feedback mechanisms.
  • Ensure that people supported by both plans are identified and addressed in consideration of age, gender, and diversity in programming across sectors. Also, partners will work towards providing specific assistance and protection services to persons with disabilities and older persons.
  • Enforce strict adherence to Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) policies within humanitarian operations will be enforced. In particular since the risks of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) are particularly heightened in an emergency and forced displacement situation due to multiple factors, such as the lack of awareness of people supported in the plans about their rights and entitlements in an unfamiliar environment, disruption of means of livelihood, family separation, breakdown of usual protective institutions and networks, and rapid and massive scale-up of recruitments and deployment of personnel from a wide array of organizations.
  • Strengthen prevention, risk mitigation and response activities to ensure Gender- Based Violence (GBV) survivors, including SEA and trafficking for sexual exploitation, have access to quality and timely survivor-centred support services. Considering that widespread gaps in access to life-saving essential services for GBV survivors have been severely exacerbated in conflict-affected states, GBV assistance will be provided in different formats, including through specialized e-platforms, mobile and static service delivery points, and State level hotlines when feasible to overcome access challenges.
  • Strengthen efforts to make their programming climate-smart and environmentally sound. Scaling-up of activities that protect both people and the environment, such as clean cooking, and solar energy interventions, will take place in RRP countries. In addition, when relevant to the context, analyses of climate and environmental risks and their implications for protection and solutions will be conducted.

Coordination and Response

Inside Sudan

The revised HRP updates the response strategy laid out in the 2023 HRP, with a focus on scale-up of lifesaving multisectoral assistance and protection services, including the related implementation approaches and costs. Activities supporting access to livelihoods and basic services will be discontinued and, depending on contextual developments, successively re-established within the scope initially foreseen in the HRP. Strategic dialogue and initiatives related to resilience solutions will resume if the situation allows.

Under the revised 2023 HRP, life-saving programming will be expanded in areas which have seen a substantial deterioration in need severity across Clusters, particularly in areas where people are now estimated to live in ‘extreme’ or ‘catastrophic’ humanitarian conditions. This includes several densely populated urban areas where fighting has been concentrated: Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman (Khartoum State), Merowe (Northern State), Al Obeid (North Kordofan), Nyala (South Darfur), Al Fasher (North Darfur), Ag Geneina (West Darfur) and Zalingi (Central Darfur). The response will also include addressing the assistance needs and protection risks for civilians in urban settings who continue to be exposed to indiscriminate violence, explosive weapons, and other violations of IHL and IHRL, such as rape, non-judiciary killings, arbitrary detention, and torture.

The response will also be significantly expanded in areas receiving significant inflows of people fleeing violence, primarily in localities of West, South and North Darfur, North Kordofan and Aj Jazirah States. Many of these areas have protracted IDP populations, with current waves of new arrivals of displaced people further straining limited basic services and exacerbating humanitarian conditions. The ongoing planting season, which started in May, is expected to be affected by the ongoing conflict, rendering further increases in food insecurity likely.

Implementation of these operational priorities will depend on a number of critical enabling factors, including assured access and safety of operations, coordination and risk management, and financial and logistical resources.

In Refugee-hosting Countries

In line with the Global Compact on Refugees, UNHCR is facilitating support to host governments’ responses, ensuring a multi-stakeholder approach and laying the groundwork for solutions from the start. The development of the RRP is being done in close collaboration with inter-agency partners. Coordination mechanisms in some countries will be strengthened with inter-agency refugee coordination fora to follow up on response strategies, steer implementation of the response and ensure coordination and information sharing with all partners.

The RRP will build on the capacities and expertise of the refugees, returnees and communities acting as first responders, noting that in many locations the capacity to respond is already overstretched as people are coming to areas where food insecurity is high and existing services are minimal or non-existent.

RRP partners will support government-led efforts to address protection and urgent needs in accordance with the regional objectives. UNHCR and partners are engaged in advocacy with host governments to seek assurances that they will keep their borders open for those fleeing Sudan, for all those fleeing.

Emergency teams are on the ground and are assisting authorities with technical support, screening and registering new arrivals, carrying out and expanding regular protection and border monitoring and strengthening reception capacity. In many of the neighbouring countries, reception centres have been open to orient new arrivals and provide vital information. Two-way communication with communities remains critical to understand the evolving situation, risks, and needs, and to inform communities of available services, registration/verification procedures, as well as relocation processes to areas further away from the border.

Protection interventions will identify the most vulnerable refugees and those at risk: survivors of violence, unaccompanied and separated children, older persons, persons with disabilities, and single women and female-headed households. Legal aid, family reunification and alternative care arrangements will be offered, and further specialized services and referral mechanisms will be set up for those most at risk of GBV and sexual exploitation and abuse.

Refugees’, returnees’ and other arrivals’ basic and urgent needs are being addressed through the delivery of food, shelter and core relief items, as well as health, nutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene services. UNHCR and other Agencies’ global supply chains have been activated and airlifts to the most remote locations are underway. Based on careful consideration of context specificities and feasibility in the affected countries, the emergency response will include delivery of cash-based interventions where it contributes to protection and solutions outcomes and maximizes efficiency, effectiveness, and impact in programme delivery. Partners will also seek to foster opportunities for solutions, inclusion and self-reliance in the framework of the humanitarian-development nexus and the GCR.

Financial Requirements

RRP requirements per country

RRP requirements by sector