March 18, 2009 Fact Sheet: Sudan Q&A

Why was Save the Children asked to leave Sudan?

On March 4 and 5, Save the Children USA and Save the Children United Kingdom received letters from the Sudanese authorities asking us to suspend operations in northern Sudan. We were among at least 13 international aid organizations to have their registrations revoked. No reason was given for the action. Read our latest press release.

What is happening now?

This has very worrying implications for the more than 1 million children and adults Save the Children USA and Save the Children UK were supporting in Sudan's West Darfur, in the North Kordofan, South Kordofan and Red Sea States, in Abyei Province and communities near the capital of Khartoum. Save the Children was providing essential support to children and their families including food, clean water, nutritional interventions, basic and reproductive health care, protection and education programs for children and women. We are complying with authorities. Save the Children is also appealing the decision and exploring all avenues — including working through the United Nations or other agencies — to help ensure that children and families in northern Sudan are not left without a lifeline. Our international staff in northern Sudan has been relocated to Khartoum or has temporarily departed the country.

What does this mean for Save the Children's programs?

If Save the Children USA and Save the Children UK's registrations to work in northern Sudan are ultimately cancelled, there are grave humanitarian implications for those benefiting from our programs, especially displaced and conflict-affected children and women in the West Darfur region. Save the Children was providing essential support to them, including monthly food distributions, clean water and sanitation projects, nutritional interventions, basic and reproductive health care, protection and education programs. Our first concern remains the health and well-being of children and families who depend on us and other agencies for help. Their difficult daily situation will be made more dire if aid agencies are not permitted to continue operations. Save the Children Sweden, whose permission to work in northern Sudan was not revoked, continues its important child protection and education programs in northern Darfur, Blue Nile and in the Khartoum area. Through its education program, Save the Children Sweden reaches approximately 35,000 children. Additionally, 12,000 children have received psychosocial support.

Are your assets being confiscated?

No. However, access to Save the Children USA and Save the Children UK offices in northern Sudan is restricted. We cannot access much of the equipment we use to do our work, including medical supplies, food, communications and transportation equipment.

What is happening to your national staff?

Save the Children hires many people from the communities in which we work. Staff members who are Sudanese nationals — over 850 — have not been evacuated away from their homes. With work in northern Sudan suspended, and given the general insecurity of regions like West Darfur, Save the Children trusts the government of Sudan to fulfill its obligations to protect its citizens.

Will this have an impact on your work in South Sudan?

Save the Children USA has been in South Sudan for over a decade and, to date, our initiatives there continue. We don't know if that situation will change or if the cessation of programs in northern Sudan will lead to movements of vulnerable families to the south. However, it is essential that aid agencies like Save the Children continue to be able to deliver lifesaving assistance to children across the country. We hope that the disruption in humanitarian assistance programs in northern Sudan does not affect our vital work in other regions of the country. And we are standing by to meet additional humanitarian needs in the south if warranted.

What does this mean for donors who support Save the Children USA's programs in Sudan?

Save the Children USA is exploring all options so that it can continue delivering essential support to children and their families in northern Sudan. We hope that the cessation of our work in that region is temporary.  Until then, we will continue to deliver lifesaving services and development programs to children in South Sudan and may even transition some programs to increase our reach and impact. Our commitment is to serve the needs of children and to fulfill the programming commitments made to them and to our loyal Sudan donors. 

What are the broad implications of aid agencies leaving northern Sudan?

According to the United Nation's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

• About 1.5 million vulnerable children and adults will no longer have access to health and nutrition services.
• Water supply, sanitation and hygiene services provided by aid agencies to 1.16 million people will soon be interrupted.
• Some 1.1 million people will stop receiving food from distributions.
• The treatment of some 4,000 children for severe and moderate malnutrition over the next three months could be interrupted.
• Some 670,000 individuals will be affected by the disrupted distribution of non-food items (including cooking equipment and basic household goods) and emergency shelter materials. Such distributions will immediately cease in 19 camps and locations in Darfur.

How long has Save the Children-USA worked in Sudan?

Save the Children USA began working in Sudan in 1984, conducting programs for children and families affected by conflict, displacement, extreme poverty, hunger and a lack of basic services. Many of the children and families we served were among the most vulnerable and hardest to reach. In March 2004, with permission of the government of Sudan, Save the Children USA entered Darfur to address the urgent needs of children and families displaced by several years of conflict. Within a month of our arrival, we had launched a large-scale response that became a sustained relief operation to provide hundreds of thousands of children and adult members of their families — especially women — with access to lifesaving food and water, basic health care and emergency obstetrical care for women, protection programs, and educational and income-generating activities.

At the five-year anniversary of our deployment to West Darfur, Save the Children remained by the side of children and women still unable to return to their villages and communities because of the region's instability and fluctuations in violence. We provided 500,000 children and adults with a lifeline of food, clean water, nutrition interventions, basic and reproductive health care, protection and education programs to children and women in camps and communities. Many roads in Darfur were unsafe because of armed groups; the violence had also periodically affected Save the Children and our local staff directly. (Additional information about our work in Sudan below.)

Additional Detail: Save the Children in Sudan

Save the Children USA's work was especially vital in the contested Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan State during two decades of conflict there. Save the Children USA was the first international nongovernmental organization (NGO) granted access to opposition-controlled areas in 1994 and for some time was the only international agency conducting humanitarian relief, primary health care and livelihoods programs in both government and opposition-controlled areas. Save the Children USA opened a South Sudan office in 2000, and have worked nonstop since to address children's needs through programs in clean water, health care, protection and education.

The signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 removed the greatest obstacle to humanitarian efforts in the region and allowed Save the Children to move from emergency efforts to longer-term relief. In 2003, at the request of the United Nations Development Program and USAID, Save the Children USA initiated conflict resolution and community development in the Abyei Province of the West Kordofan State. The province had been isolated by war and had seen no development work for two decades. Save the Children was the first NGO asked to facilitate two formerly warring tribes' collaborative efforts to achieve a lasting peace and start development programs benefiting all children and families.

Save the Children UK has been in Sudan for over 50 years. At the time of the suspension, its programs were benefiting 50,000 children in camps around Khartoum and in the Red Sea State in the northeast of the country.  Around Khartoum, it worked with displaced families, some of whom have fled the violence in Darfur and are living in desert-like conditions. Children are extremely vulnerable in this environment, and Save the Children UK was helping to protect them against physical and sexual abuse, as well as giving young people training in skills such as carpentry and tailoring. It also was helping to reunite children and parents who were separated while fleeing their homes. In the Red Sea State, one of the poorest and most neglected areas of Sudan, Save the Children UK was working to get children back into school, training teachers and rehabilitating classrooms. It was also assisting families by providing training in farming methods and helping them to set up their own businesses.

In 1985 Save the Children Sweden began its program in northern Sudan in 1985 and its program in North Darfur in 2004. Sweden has 61 staff members, none of whom are expatriates, in northern Sudan.

Read Kubra's story: Education in a Darfur Displaced Person Camp

Save the Children is the leading, independent organization creating lasting change for children in need in the United States and around the world. For more than 75 years, Save the Children has been helping children survive and thrive by improving their health, education and economic opportunities and, in times of acute crisis, mobilizing lifesaving assistance to help children recover from the effects of war, conflict and natural disasters. For more information, visit: www.savethechildren.org