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Almost half of Sudan's lifesaving kitchens have closed in last six months
Nearly half of https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/sudan">Sudan’s lifesaving community kitchens have closed down in the last six months because of a lack of international support and the impact of the US-Israeli https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/war-on-iran">war on Iran, new research from Islamic Relief has found.
The kitchens, run by local mutual aid groups and known as takaaya, have been a last lifeline for millions of civilians in the https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/sudan-war">Sudanese war.
Islamic Relief surveyed 844 kitchens in six states across Sudan, finding that 354 of them - or 42 percent - had closed because of a lack of funds and supplies.
More than 21 million people in Sudan - 45 percent of the population - are now suffering food shortages because of mass displacement and attacks on farmland and trade routes.
Over the past month, the US-Israeli war on Iran has disrupted global supply routes and put further strain on Sudan’s community kitchens, with rising food shortages and a 187 percent increase in fuel costs in the last few weeks.
The number of missing persons reported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Sudan has exceeded 11,000, representing a 40 percent increase in the past year alone.
More than 11 million people have been displaced, according to the ICRC; some have been displaced repeatedly due to shifting battle lines.
Of these displaced people, four million have left the country seeking safety abroad.
Many thousands of people have been killed.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/germany">Germany, the African Union, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/france">France, the European Union, the https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uk">UK and the https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us">US will meet in Berlin on Wednesday to address the war, which broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023.
Wednesday is the third anniversary of the conflict, which shows no sign of abating.
'Most people don’t have jobs, life is stagnated, there is no source of income, most people are fully dependent on takaaya'
- Mohammed Sulaiman Hilal, community kitchen user
The SAF and the RSF were not invited to the Berlin conference and will not have an official delegation present.
The RSF and its allies control the western region of Darfur, and the SAF and its coalition hold most of the rest of the country.
Each side has regional and international backers, with the https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uae">United Arab Emirates the key supplier of the RSF, which is led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the general better known as Hemedti.
Last week, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-ethiopian-army-base-covertly-supporting-sudans-rsf">Middle East Eye reported exclusively on Ethiopian support for the RSF, conducted from an army base in Asosa, in Ethiopia's Benishangul-Gumuz region.
The SAF, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, receives its primary support from Turkey and Egypt and is increasingly favoured by Saudi Arabia, which is at odds with the UAE over regional disputes.
Charities and human rights groups have called on the governments attending the Berlin conference this week to increase support for local response groups and, in the words of https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/04/14/sudan-world-leaders-need-to-act-on-ongoing-atrocities">Human Rights Watch, “hold abusers to account”.
The British Red Cross and Sudanese Red Crescent have called for international humanitarian law to be adhered to, as attacks on civilian infrastructure, residential homes and humanitarian workers continue.
Sudan's mutual aid network
Sudan’s community kitchens are based in mosques, community centres or homes.
They usually operate alongside Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), the Sudanese mutual aid networks that have been at the forefront of the humanitarian response to Sudan's war and which were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 and 2025.
Osama Abdulkafi Mubarak, who cooks at a community kitchen, said that approximately 200 to 250 families got their food from his takaaya every day.
“We usually cook beans ‘foul’ for breakfast, and lentils, pasta and rice for lunch….
It depends on whatever is available on the day.
It is very important, it is their main meal,” he told Islamic Relief.
'The main donors who used to pay for takayaas at the beginning of the war have stopped'
- Osama Abdulkafi Mubarak, community kitchen chef
Mohammed Sulaiman Hilal described himself as a “beneficiary” of the kitchens. “Without those community kitchens, life wouldn’t have been possible; people wouldn’t have been able to come back to their areas,” he said.
“Most people don’t have jobs, life is stagnated, there is no source of income, most people are fully dependent on takaaya.
Without takaaya’s presence there won’t be any humans left.”
Though they received some US funding towards the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, Sudanese mutual aid groups receive hardly any direct international funding, relying instead on support from the Sudanese diaspora and community donations.
US support ended with the axing of USAID under President Donald Trump, and community funding is drying up.
The conflict has fuelled an economic crisis in Sudan, with rampant inflation doubling the cost of providing meals.
“The main donors who used to pay for takayaas at the beginning of the war have stopped,” Mubarak said.
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“People were more enthusiastic to support.
They were willing to help more, but now money is much less, and even people working on the takaayas are suffering because they also have a lot of other responsibilities, and life is tough.”
“I personally think the situation is worse now, especially after this American, Israeli, Iranian war,” the community kitchen chef added. “The economic situation is worse.
Overall, it’s worse than before.”
Alaa, a community kitchen volunteer in Port Sudan, said they went from feeding 4,000 people every single day to suspending operations after their funding stopped. "When we had to close that kitchen, it felt like abandoning my own family," Alaa said.
In the last six months, according to a volunteer in Khartoum, the price of one meal has more than doubled, from $5 to almost $12.
'Death sentence'
Islamic Relief found a varied picture across Sudan's regions.
In North Darfur state, where more than half of the children are malnourished, 57 percent of surveyed kitchens have closed.
In Tawila, to which thousands of those who fled the RSF siege and capture of el-Fasher went, young volunteers regularly report closing their kitchens between donations.
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In Port Sudan, a relatively stable city under SAF control, six out of seven kitchens have closed.
But in North Kordofan, a site of recent fighting, almost all community kitchens have managed to stay open.
“The suffering in Sudan is a collective moral failure of the international community.
Three years of war have created the world’s biggest hunger crisis, and these locally run kitchens have saved countless lives,” Iftikhar Shaheen, Islamic Relief’s worldwide CEO, said.
“Their closure now is a death sentence for many vulnerable families.
Heroic volunteers are doing everything they can to keep the kitchens open, but they need more support.”
The United Nations-led 2026 appeal for Sudan has received just 16 percent of the funding it needs.
Last year’s appeal received less than 40 percent.