Port Sudan: Humanitarian Aid Commission accused of aid graft

21 August 2024

Displaced Halima Adam frequently hears about relief shipments for those suffering from the war arriving on ships that dock close to her camp in the Red Sea port city of Port Sudan in eastern Sudan. But the relief rarely reaches her and thousands like her.

Halima and her family of eight receive sporadic humanitarian aid, which she describes as meagre. She cannot buy bread and other essential food items from the market due to the crushingly high prices in the coastal city of Port Sudan. 

Halima said that the last food ration she received was in early June. It was distributed under the direction of the Humanitarian Aid Commission, an organisation that oversees humanitarian operations under the de facto army government. “It contained one kilogramme of flour and lentils, cooking oil, and some household utensils, and it ran out in just three days,” Halima told Ayin. “After that, we started to rely on community cooking initiatives; we do not know where the humanitarian aid that comes from abroad goes.”

Halima Adam and hundreds of thousands of displaced people like her in Port Sudan’s shelters share questions and doubts about the origin and distribution of aid. They face hunger without clear answers on where the aid is directed.

The Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC), linked to the Sudanese army, coordinates the distribution of food aid to the shelters for the displaced in Port Sudan, according to two local aid workers. A HAC representative is always present and in charge of the local partners’ aid distribution.

Aid and graft allegations

The displaced residing in Port Sudan and local volunteers from the emergency response rooms, a youth-driven network that supports the conflict affected, believe critical humanitarian aid is being distributed inefficiently or, worse, misdirected for economic and political gain. 

The issue of aid being sold in the markets is no secret, local residents told Ayin. Many food items, such as rice, sugar, and wheat flour, packaged in sacks clearly labelled as relief aid, can be found on the shelves of stores in Port Sudan and other areas, according to several sources, including volunteers who work in the emergency response rooms.

Samia Ahmed* is one of these volunteers based in Port Sudan. Samia told Ayin that the Humanitarian Aid Commission and security departments in Port Sudan are sending relief shipments to leaders of native administrations in Jabal, which is home to a large Sudanese army base, and other localities to instill political loyalty to the current government. “While some relief aid is sold in markets, some is used for political purposes,” Samia told Ayin. “Displaced individuals rely on limited aid from the local community, which falls short of their needs. There is no justification for them to go hungry while aid is piling up in warehouses and other aid is going to those who do not deserve it,” she said.

According to local aid workers, HAC is the sole body that determines the locations for relief distribution and directs local partners to deliver relief based on HAC’s directives. If aid is leaked into markets or given to the civil administration in Jabal, the same sources said, HAC and their local partners are implicated. Even when the emergency rooms attempt to help the displaced, HAC officials prevent them from entering the camps on the pretext that they are not registered with the commission, Samia Ahmed said.

The Commissioner-General of the Humanitarian Aid Commission, Salwa Adam Benya, refutes these allegations. “We have not recorded any incidents of this. If anyone is able to detect a case of selling relief aid and has proof, they must notify us, and we will investigate it,” Salwa Adam said. “However, if a citizen received relief aid and sold it in the market for the purpose of buying other products due to the difference in food culture, this is not our responsibility.”

Halima’s story

Halima Adam says she fled her home in the city of Bahri, north of the Sudanese capital, to Shendi. After months of suffering, she decided to travel to Port Sudan in search of a better living situation, given the presence of the central government headquarters. However, she encountered a more tragic reality in that city, overlooking the Red Sea coast.

“My husband died at the beginning of the war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, leaving me with seven boys and girls, without a breadwinner. Since our arrival in Port Sudan, we have been living under the worst humanitarian conditions. There is a severe shortage of food, as the Humanitarian Aid Commission distributes limited rations of food aid to us that only last two days,” she added.

The displaced people in the shelter centre where she resides cannot buy their food needs from the market, as they have no source of income at the moment, in addition to the crushingly high prices of goods in that city.

Port Sudan is home to about 239,000 displaced people living in 34 shelters, mainly former schools and government institutions, according to a tally issued by the United Nations last February.

Floods and shelters

In the Al-Ashi shelter centre in Port Sudan, which houses hundreds of families, the displaced remained for three consecutive days without food following torrential floods that swept through the centre. According to Abdullah Mumin*, a displaced person living in the camp, several tents collapsed in the floods, leaving many without shelter from the rain. “We contacted the Humanitarian Aid Commission through the supervisors at the centre to intervene and save our lives, but they have not come yet. The tents have collapsed, and we are now out in the open,” he told Ayin. “Even the simple food supplies we had with us were swept away by the floods. Meanwhile, the security authorities at the centre prevented us from filming the suffering and uploading it to social media.”

The limited food aid that does reach them, Abdullah said, is at times expired and damaged. He suspects the aid has been held in storage for too long. “It is bad for humanitarian aid to remain in warehouses for this long, while there are thousands of those who deserve it who are suffering from hunger.” 

Abdullah terms their experience in the Port Sudan shelters as “indescribable suffering,” as many remain hungry and homeless without access to clean drinking water and medicine. “Many of the displaced people suffer from chronic diseases and do not get the treatments they need. It is a human tragedy that we have never witnessed in our lives before.”

HAC Commissioner-General Salwa Adam said that tents and food supplies have reached the displaced in Port Sudan, but more displaced may have arrived recently and may not have received humanitarian support. The Commissioner General told Ayin that she will follow up with the Red Sea State chapter of the Commission to look into any failure of relief delivery for some of the displaced in Port Sudan.

Famine and HAC

Approximately 25.6 million people are expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity between June and September, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a multi-partner initiative for monitoring food insecurity. In addition, the IPC has declared famine in Zamzam Displacement Camp in El-Fasher, North Darfur State.

The Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) was originally established in 1985, initially as a response to the drought of the mid-1980s, to manage and organise humanitarian work within Sudan in conjunction with the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs. With the arrival of the Islamists in 1989, all aid was mediated through the commission. HAC soon became part of the National Intelligence Service of the Ministry of the Interior and not, as might be expected, the Ministry of Social Development. Since then, HAC has become a political tool, enabling the state to control civil society. 

*A pseudonym was used to protect the source’s identity