The humanitarian sector is in a period of profound uncertainty. Long-standing assumptions about the scale, purpose and political foundations of international aid are being unsettled by deep funding cuts, sharpening geopolitical competition, and growing scepticism towards liberal models of humanitarianism and peacemaking. Sudan and South Sudan offer especially important vantage points from which to examine these questions. Both countries have been the site of major international interventions over many years, generating extensive reflection on the strengths and failures of aid, and are now experiencing the effects of contraction in acute and revealing ways.
Drawing on the experience of the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility in South Sudan and the Conflict Sensitivity Facility in Sudan and interviews with 27 experts and practitioners in the humanitarian sector, this learning paper examines what the two contexts can teach global policymakers about the future of aid and provides recommendations for how humanitarian action can be made more effective, accountable and sustainable moving forward.