Emergency Response Rooms: Civil self-organisation in Sudan's war

The Sudanese model of Emergency Response Rooms is a network of grassroots community structures that has taken on key civilian support tasks during the current war in Sudan, including food distribution, medical aid, and evacuations.

Building on this example, the event will explore and discuss different perspectives on humanitarian aid. It combines a political and analytical assessment of the humanitarian situation in Sudan with a broader debate on the structure of international aid systems. In particular, it will offer a multi-perspective examination of traditional approaches to humanitarian aid and focus specifically on the potential and challenges of solidarity-based approaches.

Emergency Response Rooms (ERR) serve as a starting point for an in-depth examination of community-based and solidarity-oriented forms of support structures. During the event—particularly in light of current geopolitical developments—discourses on humanitarian aid and the media presence of international aid organizations will be contextualized, and tensions and critical perspectives on these issues will be examined and discussed.

In addition to presenting the ERR as an example of community-based support structures, the following questions will be addressed and explored collaboratively throughout the evening:

 - What opportunities do community-based support structures, such as those of the ERR, open up with regard to transnational practices of solidarity?

- How do such networks relate to institutionalized humanitarian aid?

- To what extent can dominant media and political framings of humanitarian aid contribute to the depoliticization of conflicts, wars, and state violence by pushing structural and geopolitical responsibilities into the background in favor of individualized narratives of need and powerlessness?

- How do power, solidarity, and empathy relate to one another in this context?

The event will be held in English. Simultaneous interpretation into German will be provided.

Further information about the event can be found here.