Why Geneva must anchor Sudan recovery facility?

Professor Mekki El Shibly
Executive Director, Cognisance Centre for Strategic Studies

Sudan is currently experiencing one of the most severe humanitarian crises of our time. Millions have been uprooted by fighting, essential services have collapsed, and the economy is in ruins. Families are forced daily to choose between hunger, disease, or flight. Relief agencies are stretched thin, and international appeals remain chronically underfunded, overshadowed by competing emergencies elsewhere.

Against this bleak backdrop, one fact is increasingly clear: Sudan requires more than emergency relief. It needs a bridge between saving lives today and rebuilding the foundations of tomorrow. This is where a proposed Sudan Recovery Facility (SRF) could make a decisive difference. Significantly, this is not related to the IMF’s stabilisation programmes. The SRF is a humanitarian and recovery mechanism, neutral, ring-fenced, and designed to restore dignity and resilience to Sudanese families.

The Futility of Self-Sufficiency Claims

Some Sudanese voices argue that the country can finance its own humanitarian response and reconstruction without foreign assistance. This sentiment reflects an understandable desire for autonomy. Yet the evidence paints a starkly different picture.

According to the World Bank’s Sudan Economic Update (May 2025) and the African Development Bank’s Country Focus Report (June 2025), the war has severely damaged Sudan’s domestic resource mobilisation capacity. GDP contracted by almost 30% in 2023 and a further 13% in 2024. Inflation has soared to 170%, unemployment stands above 47%, and government revenues have collapsed to less than 5% of GDP.

Even before the war, Sudan’s tax system collected below 5% of GDP, barely a quarter of its potential capacity. Subsidies on fuel and wheat consumed nearly half the national budget, while debt arrears exceeded 250% of GDP. Agriculture, critical for livelihoods and food security, has been severely impacted by conflict, with major crops down by 42–64%, irrigation systems damaged, and supply chains disrupted. Hence, the idea of Sudan’s self-financing recovery is, tragically, futile.

Why Geneva Must Act

The forthcoming Geneva talks, whether framed around peace negotiations, humanitarian pledging, or transition planning, offer one of the few international platforms where Sudan’s humanitarian, political, and reconstruction tracks converge. Placing the SRF on the agenda could achieve several vital objectives:

1. Give civilians a voice by pushing a humanitarian priority not aligned with any faction.
2. Offer donors a structured, neutral vehicle for commitments. While many are hesitant to fund political actors directly, they may be willing to invest in a ring-fenced, regionally overseen facility.
3. Bridge humanitarian relief and political transition, demonstrating that recovery is possible now while preparing for a future civilian-led government.
4. Signal urgency: without a recovery anchor, Sudan risks sliding into a prolonged emergency with no path to recovery.

A Humanitarian Imperative Beyond Relief

Relief operations save lives, but they cannot stop the slow death of Sudan’s towns and villages. Water systems are broken, clinics destroyed, schools shuttered, and markets paralysed by lack of power and credit. Unless recovery needs are addressed, displaced families will have nothing to return to, and aid dependency will harden.

The SRF is designed precisely to fill this humanitarian gap. It would not wait for a peace deal or debt relief negotiations. Instead, it would deliver immediate, neutral, and accountable support: restoring essential services, protecting the vulnerable, and reviving local livelihoods.

What Makes the SRF Different

Unlike fragmented aid channels, the SRF would be depoliticised, regionally anchored, and professionally managed.

• Oversight: African Union (AU), Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and League of Arab States (LAS), with UNDP technical support.
• Trusteeship: Managed by the African Development Bank and/or World Bank to ensure fiduciary safeguards.
• Accountability: Independent monitoring, grievance redress, and annual public audits.

This model blends the legitimacy of African oversight with the professionalism of global institutions, ensuring both trust and transparency.

Two Windows of Support

1. Recovery & Essential Services, repairing water systems, clinics, schools, and markets; providing cash-for-work, SME revival, and protection services, especially for women and children.
2. Recovery & Institutional Readiness, helping local authorities manage funds transparently and rebuild public services, laying the groundwork for a civilian-led transition.

Anchored in Evidence

The SRF would be guided by Recovery and Peacebuilding Assessments (RPBAs) and Post-Disaster Needs Assessments (PDNAs), tried-and-tested frameworks ensuring every dollar addresses urgent, community-identified needs.

Results That Matter

Within its first three years, the SRF could:

• Restore essential services for 1 million people.
• Provide livelihoods for 150,000 households.
• Support 10 local authorities in adopting transparent governance practices.

An initial one-year pipeline of USD 350 million could rehabilitate clinics and water systems, fund livelihood programmes, revive agriculture, and build basic institutional capacity.

A Facility That Spans the Transition Period

The SRF is not a substitute for a political settlement. Rather, it is a life-saving complement to humanitarian aid, designed to keep people alive and resilient until peace comes. Once a civilian transitional government is in place, the SRF could scale up its second window, funnelling larger investments into governance and institutional reform.

A Call to Conscience

Sudan’s agony will not end overnight. But inaction is not an option. Without recovery, humanitarian needs will spiral further, displacement will worsen, and the dream of recovery will fade.

The Sudan Recovery Facility offers a practical, depoliticised, and regionally anchored solution, a way to act now, not only to save lives but to restore hope. For Sudan’s people, the message should be simple: the world is not waiting for politics to settle before protecting human dignity.

Recovery is not politics. It is survival.

melshibly@hotmail.com