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A satellite image taken in March
2012 by DigitalGlobe shows the village of Um Bartumbu in
southern Sudan after it was
burned in an alleged - yet unconfirmed - raid by Sudanese
troops. The village is located in
the state of South Kordofan where clashes occur between the
Sudan People's Liberation Army
and troops fighting for the Sudanese government. The
country is one of the most
hostile environments for aid workers. Photo by: DigitalGlobe
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In Sudan, a scramble for scarce
resources is fueling disunity within the aid community, further complicating
humanitarian work in an environment that already ranks as one of the most
hostile in the world.
Many of Sudan’s more headline-grabbing
challenges are well-known: droughts and food shortages, crimes against humanity
in Darfur, the secession of the south and, most recently, violence in the South
Kordofan and Blue Nile provinces.
But the problems run much deeper,
several NGO workers tell Devex. These sources spoke on
the condition of anonymity due to the high sensitivity of the subject matter.
The situation for international relief
and development organizations in Sudan is worsening, those aid workers agreed.
The main reason, as so often, is funding: Aid groups that have long worked in
partnership are now vigorously competing for money, which has been increasingly
tight as donors shift their attention toward the young country of South Sudan
and elsewhere. (The United Nations’ 2013 appeal for Sudan is $984 million, and
for the much-smaller South Sudan, it is $1.16 billion.)
Meanwhile, the government in Khartoum
has been clamping down on foreign groups and is weighing new policies that
would make it even harder for them to operate in Sudan.
As a result, many NGOs are considering
leaving the country; some have already done so, according to our sources.
Sudan, said one aid official, aims to
fashion its NGO laws after those of Ethiopia, which
requires international groups to partner with local ones, and restricts them
from participating in the “advancement of human and democratic rights.” Those
who do so are restricted from receiving foreign aid that is more than 10
percent of their overall income.
The official reason for such rules
tends to be that they help build local capacity and ensure that a country is
put in the driver’s seat of its own development. But there may be more to the
story here.
“The government wants money,” the aid
official said about Sudan. “They want clear deliverables. They don’t want
anything that is around building understanding and capacity of people. They
want food, construction. But things that are around building people’s
understanding of rights, building people’s capacity as organizations to address
social issues in the country, they don’t like it.”
In December, four Sudanese civil
society organizations were shut down by the government. The reason behind the
closures was not immediately clear, but many believe it was due to their
promotion of democracy and human rights.
The government thwarted a coup attempt
in May and is feeling insecure, sources tell Devex. Local NGOs that have a
history of working with international groups are often unpopular with Khartoum,
and those that aren’t tend to have close ties – and often, family bonds – with
high-ranking government officials.
These NGO
laws, then, could be a way for the government to control who gets money from
abroad, a situation that is ripe for corruption and a waste of funds, aid
workers fear.
The prospect of an increased clampdown
is weighing heavily on international institutions in Sudan. Yet these groups
aren’t just in a clinch with Khartoum, but apparently also with one another.
Many of these challenges revolve
around the increasingly harsh competition between international NGOs and U.N.
agencies for funding. Sudan has long ranked as the world’s top aid recipient,
but funding has decreased markedly over the past few years – including for U.N.
operations.
Some of the NGO
workers Devex spoke with were unusually candid in their criticism of the United
Nations for teaming up directly with local groups instead of longstanding
international partners.
“Unfortunately, [U.N. agencies] have
seen the iNGOs as competitors for funding rather than critical partners and
collaborators,” one NGO official told Devex. “In the
past, the U.N. would be funding iNGOs and they would know we would be taking
the kind of operational responsibility of supporting local NGOs and national
NGOs to implement projects and at the same time build capacity. Now, because of
their own understanding that this can mobilize more resources for them, they’re
gonna say, we can do it directly, we don’t need the iNGOs.”
To be sure, U.N. officials meet
regularly with colleagues from the international NGO
community. But seeing eye to eye has become tough, the NGO
official said.
“What we generally have is we come
together from time to time to discuss views,” he said, “but very seldom is
consensus reached.”
The official appeared particularly
piqued by what he described as a lack of U.N. support in late 2011 and early
2012 when the Sudanese government temporarily banned certain NGOs from the
southern provinces of South Kordofan and Blue Nile.
What appears to be a lack of unity
among foreign institutions in Sudan may be exploited by Khartoum for its
political gain, iNGO sources fear.
“You don’t have consistency in donor
policy, you don’t have consistency in NGOs, and you have U.N. agencies
competing with each other for resources and priority in terms of funding. So
the international community is not unified … and the government has played on
this disunity,” the NGO official said. “That kind of
understanding that we need to collaborate but at the same time see each other
as competitors, it creates obstacles for really effective collaboration.”
These obstacles add to the already
strenuous conditions aid workers face in Sudan, and raise serious questions
about the future of development cooperation in what continues to be one of the
world’s most explosive hot spots.
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