The Hunger I Saw at the Sudan Border

Removing my shoes, I stepped into a hut at a refugee transit center in Renk, South Sudan, and sat down with a group of women.

One woman, 45, once ran a small tea shop in Sudan. When soldiers came down her street rounding people up, she panicked. As she slammed down the metal shutter to flee, she sliced off her finger. She was taken before she could reach her family.

Somehow, she survived. Along the way, she bonded with another woman; they arrived at the border like sisters. At the refugee center, her companion was reunited with relatives. For a moment, there was relief.

And then, reality set in: they were safe, but they were hungry.

At the border, refugees typically receive two weeks of food assistance - just enough to stabilize before moving on to family, work, or a new start. But that fragile system is collapsing. Funding cuts have slowed transportation opportunities to a trickle. Funding cuts have broken the systems whereby food gets through. People cannot move forward. They cannot go back. And now, they cannot eat.

I had never sat face to face with hunger like that. Not abstract hunger, not statistics. This was the raw despair of mothers unable to feed their children. This is what happens when humanitarian systems are forced to scale back.

A Crisis the World Is Overlooking

Sudan is now the site of the largest, and perhaps most overlooked humanitarian crisis in the world.

Since 2023, Sudan’s civil war has forced nearly 12 million people from their homes, leaving one in three Sudanese displaced. More than 1.3 million have fled to South Sudan alone, many uprooted multiple times and facing compounded trauma.

The women I met carried stories that are almost impossible to hold: husbands missing or killed before their eyes, repeated displacement, sexual violence, childbirth in flight.

And yet, here in the United States, I keep hearing that we are entering a “post–humanitarian aid era.”

Not on my watch.

We know aid works. It has eradicated diseases, reduced child mortality, and stabilized entire regions. It advances not just compassion, but global security and democratic stability. But most importantly, it changes individual lives — especially for women trying to rebuild from nothing.

In South Sudan, I met Edina, a teacher guiding girls toward leadership. I met a medic performing emergency C-sections because funding cuts eliminated surgeons. I met Jacqueline, a former teacher turned entrepreneur, whose UNHCR-seeded business now supports both refugees and locals. I met a mother who gave birth alone in the bush while fleeing, with two small children beside her, constantly looking over her shoulder. I met Funmi, a humanitarian aid worker who has devoted her life to others.

I met far too many women who had endured violence that should never be spoken of, let alone survived.

But I also heard something else: stories of resilience. Women forming bonds with strangers to survive. Protecting their children. Building fragile, determined futures. Urgency and hope, side by side.

What Happens Next Is Up to Us

When we see suffering on this scale or hear about massive aid cuts, it’s easy to feel paralyzed. But the reality is this: systems are already in place. The UN and its partners are on the ground, ready to deliver life-saving support at scale. What’s missing is the funding to make those systems work as they were designed to. There are people doing everything they can. What they lack is not will. It is support.

I have been moved to act, and I’m asking you to act with me.

Support a humanitarian organization you trust — UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is one — serving as a backbone in crises like this. Set up a monthly donation, whatever you can afford. And hold elected leaders accountable for funding global aid.

Because these systems do not fail on their own. They fail when we allow them to.

What Hope Looks Like

After that devastating conversation about hunger, I walked into a women’s safe space at the transit center, a place where survivors of violence can begin to heal. While funding cuts have already shut down three out of four of these centers, this one remained.

Inside, women were dancing and ululating. In Sudan, ululation is a traditional vocal expression used to express deep joy.

They told me it helps them heal. Someone turned on a boom box. A woman on my right showed me the dance steps. The woman on my left laughed. I laughed. 

And in that moment, something shifted. Hope was there in that room, in their movement, in their joy against all odds.

But hope like that is fragile. It does not survive without support.

What you give — whatever that looks like — can keep a center like that open. It can put food in a child’s hands. It can give a woman the chance to begin again, knowing the world has not forgotten her.