Foreign Aid — News & Analysis

Sudan's soup kitchens close; over 30,000 lose daily food as U.S. aid vanishes (February 13, 2025)

February 13, 2025 — Every one of the 40 community kitchens operated by Sudan's grassroots Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) in the Darfur region — which had been feeding between 30,000 and 35,000 people daily in areas too dangerous for international aid organizations to reach — shut down after the Trump administration froze U.S. foreign assistance. The United States had been Sudan's largest single donor in 2024, contributing $800 million, roughly 46 percent of the UN's entire humanitarian funding for the country. With the freeze, that funding vanished overnight.

"Women and children are being turned away and we can't promise them when we can feed them again," said one Sudanese aid coordinator. Sudan was already experiencing what the UN called the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with more than 8 million people on the brink of famine and over 25 million — more than half the population — in need of humanitarian assistance, the result of nearly two years of brutal civil war. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said it was fielding desperate requests from local responders to fill the gap but was explicit: "MSF can't fill the gap left by the U.S. funding withdrawal."

Meanwhile, food shipments already en route to Sudan from the U.S. sat in warehouses in Cameroon and Djibouti — rice, wheat, lentils, flour, and beans being air-conditioned to prevent spoiling and sprayed against insects — their ultimate fate unknown. The aid coordinator of the ERRs in Darfur gave a "10 to 20 day window" before people would start dying from hunger without the resumed kitchens. Over 1,000 USAID-supported food aid kitchens across Sudan would ultimately close in the months that followed.