More than Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti, and Myanmar, Sudan already faces the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. President Trump’s Inauguration Day executive order, which imposes a 90-day freeze on expenditures by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), worsened the situation, halting local public health, food assistance, and mutual aid to suffering civilian populations in both Sudan and neighboring South Sudan.
For Lina Ajaak, president of the South Sudanese Community Association in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, the devastation is unreal.
“People are suffering. The government is suffering because they don’t have any sort of budget, so those who were already dependent on USAID are now in crisis. There’s no food, no medicine. People are dying from cholera and malaria, but hospitals cannot afford to treat people; nor can the people afford to buy any medicines because they don’t have jobs. What are they supposed to do?”
The destruction is further affected by small non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that can no longer distribute medicines or vaccines to children. Ajaak says none are more affected than those who were already without means in the Sudans.
Ajaak fields calls daily from scared Sudanese family and friends.
As she told TLC, “Just this morning a woman, a cousin of mine, called. She’s scared. She has seven kids, and she’s worried because she’s not working. Her husband is not working. The grandma is not working. Where are they now going to get food to feed her family?” Without aid, she does not know when her family will eat again.
The American Friends of the Episcopal Church of the Sudans (AFRECS) reported in a February 7 update, “USAID had been supplying two-thirds of the support for the Emergency Response Rooms created by brave and resourceful Sudanese to provide one meal per day to starving people. That support has stopped dead.”
The Center for Global Development, a think tank based in Washington and London, said in a February 11 report that South Sudan and Somalia are the nations most deeply affected by the USAID shutdown. The U.S. share of official development assistance in South Sudan is 40 percent, with 36 percent funded directly by USAID.
The organization lists Sudan, where American assistance provides 31 percent of aid, as the sixth-most affected country, though because of its civil war, the humanitarian crisis is generally considered worse. Germany is the largest non-U.S. aid provider in both countries.
The situation was dire before the freeze began. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), an international humanitarian NGO, reports that “before the crisis erupted in April 2023, Sudan was already experiencing a humanitarian crisis that left 15.8 million people in need of humanitarian aid. The conflict has greatly exacerbated these conditions, surging displacement figures to 14.6 million and leaving 30.4 million people—more than half of Sudan’s population—in need of humanitarian support.”
The Sudanese, IRC says, are “on a trajectory toward catastrophic humanitarian collapse.”
Without American funding, one regional coordinator in Sudan’s western Darfur region predicts people will start dying of starvation within 10 to 20 days.
“It’s a horrible lack of empathy for people who are starving,” Dane F. Smith, a retired foreign service ambassador and executive director of AFRECS, told TLC. “The notion that the U.S. government would just cut off aid and ultimately see lives lost to this is appalling.”
Thomas H. Staal, a retired Counselor to USAID and former head of the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, remains in touch with USAID staff coordinating food aid in the region. The scale of destruction, he says, is unfathomable.
“I’m sure you’ve heard about the situation in Gaza: They need 500 or 600 trucks to come in a day, in order to properly feed 2 million people. But in Sudan, you’ve got 25 million people who are in even worse need. How many trucks a day does that lead up to? How many people are now not getting fed because thousands of trucks can’t get into the country?”
For Staal, new wreckage arrives daily: The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has stopped giving daily HIV drugs to 220,000 people the world, including in the Sudans. Third-party contractors who brought food into war-torn parts of Sudan, in particular, are no longer driving, unable to distribute food to those who need it most.
Both Staal and Smith cite the resiliency of the Sudanese people as on-the-ground efforts in cities, villages, and towns sprung up immediately after the war began. Staal reports that work is still happening through NGOs. Although private organizations such as World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, UNICEF, Save the Children, and CARE rely on projects funded by USAID, private donations often allow organizations to continue their work.
It’s not any different for AFRECS, a network of individuals, churches, dioceses, and other organizations seeking to focus attention on the pastoral and peace-building needs and priority of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and the Episcopal Church of Sudan, and to enable American friends to assist both churches in meeting the needs of their peoples.
“Church grounds are now wall-to-wall with refugees. Although some refugees have moved out to other parts of the country, we’ve been able to provide emergency aid to the archbishop and to bishops of rank to help these refugees,” Smith said.
With more than 60 bishops in South Sudan alone, many of the bishops AFRECS supports are out in the bush, “digging into the countryside and providing extraordinary leadership.” Even though it can feel like a drop in the bucket when it comes to feeding starving people, Smith says a bishop’s job is often focused on simply providing food to scattered parishes.
Concerned citizens can contact members of Congress. Even though a significant level of aid to Sudan, including water wells, maintenance, and agriculture initiatives, is not technically humanitarian, it is a tremendous help to Sudanese people.
Donations are welcome at afrecs.org.
Cara Meredith, a freelance writer and postulant for holy orders in the Diocese of California, lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
