They Were Nominated Twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Today, They’re a Final Lifeline for Sudan under Seige.

The Sudanese Emergency Response Rooms began as neighborhood collectives administering emergency triage. Now they stand between survival and starvation for millions.

For the second consecutive year, Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Last week, when Venezuela’s María Corina Machado was announced as this year’s winner — celebrated for her defense of democracy and opposition to authoritarianism — the ERR volunteers were already back at work, focused on what mattered to their communities: survival.

Since April 2023, when conflict erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), more than ten million Sudanese have been driven from home, with women and girls bearing the brunt of the world’s largest humanitarian emergency. Amid this devastation, the ERRs have become both a miracle and a rebuke: RSF forces have intensified their assault on El Fasher, where hundreds of thousands of civilians remain trapped under siege with little access to food, water or medical aid. After more than 500 days of isolation, many are on the brink of starvation. Across South Kordofan, which analysts say is the latest frontline of the war, locals and humanitarian agencies warn that funding cuts and blocked aid access are presenting dire conditions to locals.

Into this void have stepped ERRs — a robust network of volunteers who have been active across Sudan’s 18 states and 118 localities. They distribute food and aid, evacuate the wounded and displaced, deliver babies, even repair damaged power lines, and bury the dead.

“We didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize,” said Hanin Ahmed, founder of the Old Omdurman Emergency Response Room, in an interview with More to Her Story. “But we won the people’s hearts. We won the meaning of humanity.”

For ERR leaders like Ahmed, many of whom are women, the nomination itself is less about global recognition and more about validation: they are living proof that a grassroots model deeply rooted in Sudanese heritage, known colloquially as nafeer, can succeed where institutions have failed. It’s also a reminder of the stakes: that every meal shared, every evacuation coordinated, every life saved is an act of resistance against collapse.

Dr. Tamma Mohamed, who works with an ERR in Jabal Awlya, south of Khartoum, said during a Friday press conference hosted by Avaaz that formal institutions and humanitarian aid pathways have disappeared entirely. 

In her village, she said more than 12,000 cases of dengue fever have been reported among a population of about 100,000. There’s a “widespread epidemic of disease like malaria, typhoid and leishmaniases,” Mohamed said, the latter of which is a parasitic disease transmitted via infected sand flies. She said that twenty-six percent of the area’s children are now out of school, and the schools themselves are “totally destroyed,” amid RSF bombardments that Mohamed said has contributed to an emergent environmental crisis.

“Bombings destroy farmland, contaminate water sources, and leave behind hazardous materials that make land unsafe for agriculture or habitation. Rivers and water systems are polluted in areas like Al Salha and Soba by debris and chemical residues from weapons and corpses that are still all over the state, threatening both human health and ecosystems,” she said.

To this end, the ERRs have done more than meet physical needs where government institutions have run dry. They have borne witness, memorialized the dead, carried their stories to international watchdogs, and built community from ruin.

According to a United Nations report, $4.2 billion is required to provide humanitarian aid in Sudan, particularly given the gendered contours of the war: A recent UN report noted “widespread and systematic violations” against women and girls, including sexual violence, abductions, and killings. Yet only $17 million has been received so far, according to Mohamed.

And since the start of hostilities, ERR volunteers have died "because of the abduction, torture, bombarding, diseases and epidemics," Mohamed said. The survivors work anyway, running communal kitchens, restoring downed power lines, and evacuating families trapped by fighting. They do this while being targeted by both sides of the war. "In the case of RSF-controlled areas, they are directly being targeted," said Nathaniel Raymond, who is the human rights investigator and the Executive Director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health.

Women and children collect clean water in Zalingei, central Darfur. Credit: UNICEF/Tariq Khalil

In the case of SAF-controlled areas, “some of the emergency response rooms have actually been saying that it's much riskier for them to describe themselves as ERRs under SAS than it was under RSF,” said Laetitia Bader, who is the Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch. She added that ERRs have "really come under serious attack because of the work they've been doing, perceived as collaborators by both sides."

Mohamed hopes the Nobel nomination can highlight the severity of the situation in Sudan to the international community and "increase the visibility of the local initiatives and grassroots responses" to help attract funding, technical support and more protection for volunteers.

At Al-Saudi Maternity Hospital in Omdurman, Dr. Safa Ali heads the last standing medical facility in the city. She coordinates with the ERRs in a clinical role, "mainly receiving patients they evacuated, coordinating referrals and urgent transfers, and supporting ad hoc information and supply sharing during emergencies."

Dr. Ali explained the hospital faces severe shortages of medicine, blood and supplies, along with unreliable power, reduced staff and security risks that prevent timely patient transfers. Maternal and neonatal care has suffered particularly, as more women arrive after travel delays or exposure to bombardments, compounding dangers for mothers and newborns.

Ali called the ERRs' work "a vital lifeline where regular health services have broken down."

In El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, Dr. Yasser Ibrahim described dire conditions under siege. "This city has been heavily burdened by repeated attacks from the Rapid Support Forces militia through artillery shelling and unjust siege, preventing the entry of humanitarian aid, including food and medicine."

"I wish for peace in El Fasher and for its people. I hope the world will pay attention to the situation in my city, lift the siege, and contribute to bringing in food and medicine," he said.

Despite the ERRs’ internationally recognized contributions, their work has largely unfolded in the margins of global headlines, sustained by moral courage and necessity rather than global aid. To humanitarian researchers and rights monitors who have monitored the conflict from afar, the ERRs stand as both a testament to resilience and an indictment of international apathy.

Raymond, whose humanitarian research lab focuses on the region, described El Fasher as "the final battle for the end of the Darfur genocide that began in early 21st Century." When the city falls, he said, "the destruction of El Fasher means the destruction of the last IDP camps of refuge from the first genocide [in 2003], and we have left these people to fundamentally die.” 

Raymond noted that El Fasher has been under the world’s most severe food insecurity rating, a humanitarian classification known as IPC 5, "for 15 months. Fifteen times Gaza's length of famine." When the Zamzam IDP camp fell to RSF forces in April, people had "starved so long that when they tried to run, they dropped dead on the road.”

Twenty years ago, a global coalition of over 800,000 activists banded together to shine a light on atrocities in Darfur, underscored by celebrity endorsements and myriad commitments from at least 190 faith-based organizations. "Now, when it counts most, there's none of that," Raymond said. "What Darfur is, besides an entirely preventable tragedy, is it's a mirror to who we are as a country now, and if we look into it, we can see how thoughtless we've become, and how cruel."

But ERR volunteers like Duaa Tariq have refused to wait for the world to act.

Tariq joined an ERR "on the second day of war in Khartoum." She stayed when she could have fled, choosing instead to help her neighbors. "We started by doing anti-war graffiti art on the walls of Khartoum," she said. By the fourth day, the ERRs were meeting urgent needs: distributing food, establishing communal kitchens, creating safe spaces for women, and offering alternative education.

"The collective survival instinct was very high," Tariq said. "With the absence of the international community and organizations... we were just left alone. Then the community, we came together."

Now, as fighting has subsided in parts of Khartoum, ERRs are "shifting from providing emergency support into rebuilding the community and rebuilding the society," Tariq said.

When asked about peace, Tariq offered a perspective that cut through diplomatic platitudes: "Peace has been politicized a lot. ...but in the community, we experience it every day. We experienced peace during the war in the soup kitchen, around mutual aid when people came together." She added, "Peace cannot be tailored inside conferences or meeting rooms. Peace can only come from the community, and peace can only come by believing in the idea that communities can help [themselves]."

Ahmed, founder of the Old Omdurman Emergency Response Room, emphasized the same resilience when the RSF first took control of Khartoum: "Only ERRs were there. In El Fasher, in Kordofan, [and other localities.]" Her message to the international community is clear: "Please stop treating us as a passive recipient."

As Sudan’s conflict drags on, the ERRs continue to operate, rebuilding what they can — and reminding the world that local action can endure even when global attention fades.