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As unprecedented hunger grips Sudan, countless lives hang in the balance. Previous humanitarian efforts have fallen short, but a shift to cash-based interventions such as multi-purpose cash assistance and group cash transfers could be the lifeline needed to prevent widespread deaths.
The humanitarian response in Sudan, where conflict has been raging and ravaging lives for over a year, finds itself at a crossroads. In light of immense restrictions on the movement of goods and personnel into and within the country, the response’s primary focus on in-kind aid has proven to be ineffective in reaching people and meeting the sheer scale of needs of populations in the country. As a result, the humanitarian situation has only deteriorated since the conflict began and has now reached critical levels, with people already dying of starvation in parts of the country, and extremely worrying levels of malnutrition among children, especially adolescent girls, and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Despite advocacy efforts aimed at recognizing the potential for the use of cash programming, especially multi-purpose cash assistance (MPCA), including to quickly address the most urgent food and other basic needs, it is still not being prioritized in the response. Yet, evidence and experiences gathered by humanitarian organizations over the past year show that cash works in Sudan, and is currently the quickest - and sometimes only - way to save lives in many conflict-affected areas where humanitarian access is increasingly challenging.
Amid mounting hunger-related deaths and a high risk of famine, the response should immediately pivot to a focus on MPCA as a rapid first-line modality, with consideration of whether in-kind assistance can be complementary as access allows.
The response should also prioritize building on existing structures that have the capacity for a rapid and immediate scale up. Members of the Sudan Cash Working Group have the operational capacity to reach nearly 2 million people with multi-purpose cash by October 2024, which would cost an estimated USD 380 million in funding.