Using conflict-sensitive interventions as building blocks for recovery in Sudan

More than half of Sudan’s population is currently in need of humanitarian support, following years of worsening conflict and mass displacement. A team from the University of Oxford led by Dr Mona Ibrahim (Department of Social Policy and Intervention) has been guiding front-line groups to provide conflict-sensitive assistance that supports the country’s long-term recovery.

In areas where there is ongoing conflict, social assistance must adapt to complex situations to serve communities in desperate need. “When assistance is delivered in ways that are conflict blind, it can damage the same thing it is intended to fix,” says Dr Ibrahim, who has worked in conflict zones in Sudan, and whose immediate family have been displaced by the crisis. “It can contribute to divides within communities, empower the wrong groups, or end up fuelling tensions. However, when assistance is not just delivered to communities, but shaped by them, this allows us to give people what they actually need – not what we think they need.”

Coordinating a more thoughtful form of social assistance requires the collaboration of a diverse group of actors. The team’s research allowed them to bring together everyone from community activists and NGOs to international organisations and government representatives. Together, they started a vital dialogue about how to move towards a collective goal of reducing food insecurity.

“The research helped us bridge those divides, it made people realise they were all working towards the same thing,” says Dr Ibrahim. “We saw a lot of participants take that conversation back with them and really try to embed it within their own institutions – at NGOs, community organisations, and at UN and bilateral levels. People were asking: ‘what can we do to make sure that social assistance addresses the root of fragility here?’”

Dr Muez Ali of the Qatar Foundation explains the power of bringing these different perspectives together: “The workshops served a need no other actor was willing to address at the time: to bridge the disconnect between donor accountability requirements and operational challenges in service provision. The convening of civil society actors and researchers was a brilliant idea to both understand the needs of actors on the ground and introduce them to experts who could support their activities.”

This important work is already connecting with policymakers leading on humanitarian and development responses in Sudan and conflict-affected areas around the world – informing intervention design by front-line responders, UN, and bilateral agencies. Dr Ibrahim says the next step is to operationalise this vision: “It is crucial that we consider research alongside social assistance in Sudan – to assess and inform conflict-sensitive delivery in this unravelling crisis.”

Dr Mona Ibrahim was Highly Commended in the Emerging Impact category of the 2025 Social Sciences Impact Awards for the foundations of recovery: a new vision for social assistance in Sudan.

Social Sciences Impact Awards 2025 (photo: John Cairns)