Humanitarian Response

Diaspora humanitarianism grows out of transnational connections that link diaspora groups with their families and homelands. This relational and affective dimension enables rapid mobilisation and delivery to hard-to-reach areas.

Remittances to conflict-affected countries surpass official humanitarian aid six times, blurring boundaries between short-term emergency relief and long-term development.

Accountability practices tend to be informal and trust-based, structured around reputation. Overall coordination with formal political or humanitarian systems is usually absent.

This briefing is an output of the Diaspora Humanitarianism in Complex Crises (D-Hum) project, a partnership between the Danish Institute for International Studies, Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, Rako Research and Communication Centre, and the Rift Valley Institute.

The briefing was written by Mohamed Aden Hassan, Sahra Ahmed Koshin, Peter Albrecht, Mark Bradbury (RVI), Fatima Dahir Mohamed, Abdirahman Edle Ali, Karuti Kanyinga, Nauja Kleist, George Michuki, Ahmed Musa, Jethro Norman and Obadia Okinda, and was originally published by D-Hum.

The effects of climate change are expected to be greatest in the Horn of Africa countries, particularly those, such as South Sudan, whose populations are reliant on rain-fed agricultural production to meet their food and income needs. As one of the least developed countries in the world, South Sudan’s population is dependent on climate sensitive natural resources for their livelihoods, making the country particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. South Sudan’s future economy will be significantly influenced by climate change and the potential for socio-economic losses and damages due to climate change is one of the largest unknowns in the country’s future.

This CSRF briefing paper explores current climate context and trends in South Sudan, peers into the future of climate change and reflects on consequences of it on the economic and climate sensitive sectors in South Sudan. Lastly, the briefing paper suggests responses for policy and practice such as providing climate sensitive aid and supporting the Government of South Sudan to develop AND implement a national strategy for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

This report explores the important role chiefs’ courts play in food security and in addressing hunger in South Sudan by reallocating food to vulnerable community members. Their role is particularly important in view of famine and recurrent extreme food insecurity affecting South Sudan. The authors suggest that chief courts potentially offer useful data for famine early warning and responses but also underline that humanitarian actors engaging with chiefs’ courts should do so with a contextually informed and locally nuanced approach.

In the Horn of Africa, there is a fundamental mismatch between the nation state framework through which bilateral and multilateral actors see the world, and the networked lives of often vulnerable populations in the region. This is most obvious at the margins of these states, where identities are fluid and decades of displacement and mobility have created extensive global networks beyond the control of state actors. Though movement and mobility, and to an extent the pathways used, are not new, the ability of the transnational
to become integrated with everyday life in disparate locations is.
The transformative impact of everyday transnational linkages is particularly acute in politically and economically marginalized borderlands. These areas are historically subject to more extractive forms of government. Given their insecure locations, such areas traditionally have attracted predominantly emergency assistance. In particular, these borderland spaces have become central to refugee operations in the Horn of Africa, with national
governments content for international resources to substitute for their own more proactive engagement.
An unintended consequence of this approach, however, has been to unmoor these territories further from the national sphere. Refugee programming has helped to internationalize them by creating incentives for transnationalism, whether to attend better schools over borders or by creating new migration routes to western countries that offer resettlement. This has created complex transnational resource flows through family and
extended kinship networks, transforming remote border posts into nodes for flows of
people, cash and social capital.
In these contexts, what are often perceived by outsiders as traditional and highly localized orders are actually interacting with the contemporary global economy and multiple cultural influences. The result can be a subversion of the usually unequal relationships between centre and periphery that not only challenges the spatial organization of state power but also the internal ordering of local societies.
If international actors are unaware of these dynamics, they are failing to understand a critical
component of how individuals, families and communities are organizing themselves
and surviving. Whether focused on fostering community resilience, tackling local conflicts
or encouraging economic activity, there is a need to understand better the daily influence of transnational dynamics. There is also a risk of significant negative effects on local populations from interventions designed to reassert the control of the centre or harden state boundaries.
This suggests a need for further research into the role of the aid industry in transnational political economies, and the opportunities and pitfalls of donor engagement in borderlands. Such research requires new or adapted analytical frameworks that can both investigate and describe complex networked systems. This entails, for example, asking questions about how changes in one location can impact on populations thousands of
kilometres away. Such frameworks also need to foreground individual agency in order to move beyond the limited standard accounts of mobility that focus on push and pull factors.

Every year, IRC publishes its Emergency Watchlist, an assessment of the 20 countries at greatest risk of new humanitarian emergencies each year. Its 2024 Watchlist identified Sudan as the humanitarian crisis most at risk of deteriorating this year, an assessment that is unfortunately proving to be accurate: Sudan is already the world’s worst displacement crisis and is rapidly becoming the world’s worst hunger crisis.
On June 25 2024, IRC released a mid-year Crisis Alert on Sudan. The new report illustrates the trajectory of a country in freefall and highlights how military decision makers, regional powers, and the international community have all failed the people of Sudan. It analyses why the conflict has continued to escalate and spread, outlines how severe constraints on humanitarian access contribute to a response that is failing to meet needs, and provides recommendations to drive an urgently needed diplomatic and humanitarian course correction. The report pushes for tilting of scales towards peace, not more war, and an overall reset of the humanitarian response.
IRC hopes that you will find this report useful, and please do not hesitate to reach out if you'd like to discuss it with them in further detail. Please also feel free to share it widely with colleagues.
In case of any questions, please feel free to reach out to Anne-Marie Schryer-Roy, Regional Advocacy Coordinator, East Africa, International Rescue Committee [email protected]

An FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission (CFSAM) visited South Sudan from 15 to 20 December 2019 to estimate the cereal production during 2019 and assess the overall food security situation in the country. The CFSAM reviewed the findings of several Crop Assessment Missions conducted from June to December 2019 at planting and harvest time in different agro-ecological zones of the country.

South Sudan is facing worsening economic conditions due to conflict, climate shocks, and oil dependency, leading to inflation, food insecurity, and unemployment. Communities adapt through informal support systems and local production. Mercy Corps calls for aid to align with local resilience efforts to sustain livelihoods amid ongoing crises.

This Briefing Paper examines how UN peace operations are using casualty data to enhance the implementation of key elements of their mandates, including the protection of civilians (PoC), the promotion and protection of human rights, and conflict prevention, thereby contributing to achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.1: ‘Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related deaths rates everywhere’.

It argues that, in the absence of data from state institutions, UN peace operations can be a good alternative source of data in conflicts where they operate for measuring SDG 16 Indicator 16.1.2: ‘Conflict-related deaths per 100,000 population, by sex, age and cause’. The paper assesses the current casualtyrecording efforts of three of the largest UN missions operating in highly volatile contexts: the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), and the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). The aim is to obtain a fuller understanding of these missions’ functions—and the gaps in aligning their data collection efforts with the fulfilment of elements of their mandate and the recording of data relevant to SDG Indicator 16.1.2.

The ability to predict and analyze famine has improved sharply in the past fifteen years. However, the political influences on data collection and analysis in famine and extreme food security emergencies continue to limit evidence-based prevention and response. In many emergencies, good quality data are not readily available, which makes it easy to undermine analysis processes and distort findings. In some cases, these processes are even shut down for political reasons. Sometimes governments or armed groups are the party influencing results for political ends. But it can also be agencies, donors, and even local leaders.

This study documents those political influences, synthesizing findings from six different country case studies (five of which have been considered at risk of famine in recent years) including in South Sudan, noting separate influences on data collection and on analysis processes and the way these play out. Famine analysis will never be free of political influences, but this study recommends good practice for better managing political influences.

The extensive flooding in South Sudan in 2020 has led to significant displacement across the country. Over the past few months, there has been a large influx of primarily flood-affected Dinka into the Mangalla area, in the northern part of Juba County, Central Equatoria. While many of these Internally Displaced People (IDPs) were displaced by flooding in Jonglei state, others are arriving from the Shirikat neighbourhood in Juba. The arrival of large numbers of people into the Mangalla area, and the accompanying humanitarian response, has the potential to exacerbate existing tensions between the Bari and Mundari residents of Mangalla over control of land and other commercially signficant resources in the area. In addition, there are also fears amongst Mangalla residents that some recent arrivals are not fleeing floods, but rather seeking commercial opportunities in the area. As a result, it is important that donors and humanitarian actors understand the underlying conflict dynamics and drivers in Mangalla, and that the response is planned and implemented using a conflict sensitive lens.