Initial government update on UK aid to Sudan review

Introduction

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) review of UK aid to Sudan was published on 15 October 2025. The government’s response was published on 18 December 2025.

The government provided ICAI with a progress update in July 2026, which we have published below.

Background

ICAI published a review of UK aid to Sudan in October 2025, which made seven recommendations. The review looked back over the past six years, from the hopeful period of democratic transition that followed President Omar al-Bashir’s fall in 2019, through the October 2021 military coup and open warfare since April 2023. It examined the UK’s diplomatic, development and humanitarian support to Sudan and people affected by the conflict in neighbouring countries.

In December 2025 the government published a response. The response welcomed our review and accepted all seven recommendations.

Six months on, we followed up with the government to assess early actions taken in response to the review.

Government's progress update

The Government welcomes ICAI’s continued engagement following the publication of ‘UK aid to Sudan’ (the review). This recognised what it termed the UK’s sustained commitment to Sudan, its international leadership across the diplomatic and humanitarian response, and the deep expertise and professionalism of UK civil servants working on one of the world’s most complex and rapidly evolving contexts. The review made seven recommendations to reinforce that response, which the Government accepted in full. This update sets out the steps taken to respond to these in the six months since publication on 15 October 2025 and identifies ongoing areas of work to strengthen delivery and maximise impact for the people of Sudan.

Recommendation 1

Recommendation 1: Ensure sustained high-level political attention to the Sudan conflict and humanitarian crisis, including by strengthening cross-government ownership and coordination.

The brutal conflict and humanitarian crisis in Sudan are both a priority for the Foreign Secretary and the Government. The UK’s significant ambition on Sudan is being delivered through sustained attention, regular engagement, and credible leadership across multiple multilateral forums, including at the UN Security Council (UNSC), UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the G7, the G20, and alongside the African Union (AU).

Over the last six months, the clearest indication of this effort was the International Sudan Conference in Berlin on 15 April 2026, which the UK co-hosted with Germany, France, the United States, the African Union and the European Union. In the leadup to the conference, the UK led efforts for a stronger international response to the crisis in Sudan, both publicly and privately, drawing on its role as penholder at the UNSC and its strength as a convenor to mobilise action. At the conference, more than £1 billion was pledged by the UK and international partners. This included £146 million in ODA funding announced by the Foreign Secretary, sustaining the UK as one of the largest bilateral donors to Sudan. Despite a shifting global development context, this commitment reflects continued high-level political attention.

As penholder at the UNSC, the UK has used the full range of Council levers to sustain international attention on the conflict. Following the RSF’s deadly assault on El Fasher, the UK convened a Council session on 30 October to press for de-escalation and co-penned a press statement condemning the attack. The Foreign Secretary put Sudan top of the agenda during the UK’s presidency of the Security Council on 19 February, relaying her personal experience of meeting Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad while ensuring that the UN Fact-Finding Mission’s findings on El Fasher were formally presented to the Council chamber to promote international scrutiny and action.

Passing resolutions at the UNSC on Sudan is often challenging. For example, Russia cynically vetoed a resolution co-drafted by Sierra Leone, and supported by all other Security Council members, on the protection of civilians in Sudan. Despite this, the UK, as penholder on Sudan, has played a leading role in delivering eight UNSC resolutions and eleven press statements since the conflict began.

To drive international attention to and action against atrocities in Sudan, on 26 February, the UK launched the Coalition for Atrocity Prevention and Justice in Sudan to raise the costs of committing atrocities, advance protection for communities and support local human rights defenders, and lay the foundations for justice for the Sudanese people. The Coalition has since grown to seven members, and has issued joint statements in March and May, condemning a mass casualty strike on a hospital in East Darfur and bringing the world’s attention to the risks of atrocities in the city of Dilling. Work is ongoing to continue to grow the Coalition’s membership. This work builds on and amplifies the UKs ongoing work to support human rights defenders in Sudan and enable long term justice and accountability via its support to the ICC and the UN Fact Finding Mission.

The Government recognises that only bringing an end to the conflict will alleviate the suffering in Sudan. The UK has sustained support for the Quad’s efforts to broker a ceasefire and unhindered humanitarian access as central to its Sudan response. Sudan is a top priority for all the Foreign Secretary’s senior level engagement, including with Quad partners (KSA, UAE, Egypt and the US), pressing for coordinated action to cut off arms flows, disrupt supply lines and press for progress at the negotiating table. At the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in France in March, the Foreign Secretary pressed for collective action to deliver progress towards a truce ahead of the International Sudan Conference in Berlin. After the conference, following sustained engagement, all conference participants endorsed the Berlin Principles – 12 guiding principles for a peaceful and durable resolution to the conflict in line with the Quad Joint Statement, the African Union Roadmap and Resolutions and other relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Sudan.

The FCDO continues to coordinate the cross-Government response to Sudan, and this has been strengthened via senior official and Ministerial engagement across Government departments. This has included a joint FCDO-Ministry of Defence (MoD) visit to Port Sudan in late January 2026 to support ceasefire dialogue, and ongoing coordination with the Cabinet Office, including the National Security Secretariat (NSS) to ensure strategic coherence across HMG.

In parallel, the FCDO is working across HMG to identify and disrupt the financial and commercial enablers of the conflict, including illicit finance and gold networks, arms flows and the wider war economy. This work brings together FCDO, HM Treasury (HMT), the Home Office, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the National Crime Agency (NCA) and others, reinforcing Sudan as a cross-HMG priority. The Prime Minister’s recent commitment to continuing to play a leading humanitarian role in Sudan demonstrates the crisis’ priority status at the very top of Government.

Recommendation 2

Recommendation 2: Develop and implement a clear regional approach to the Sudan conflict, aligning strategies across Sudan and neighbouring countries.

The conflict has become increasingly regionalised and arms and illicit flows transiting the region into Sudan are prolonging the violence and eroding incentives for either side to negotiate. The Foreign Secretary highlighted this at the UNSC and through her visit to Addis Ababa in February 2026 – where she met with the African Union Chairperson Mohamed Youssef, and neighbouring countries’ Foreign Ministers (namely, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, and Chad) to discuss the situation in Sudan and its impacts on the region.

In the last six months, the FCDO has adopted an explicitly regional approach on Sudan through various means. Sudan, South Sudan and Chad teams engage regularly at all levels on programmatic and policy priorities, for example joining up on lobbying between Chad and Sudan teams to push for the Adre border crossing to remain open. Desk officers within the Sudan and South Sudan Unit have been assigned clear regional and thematic portfolios to support regional engagement. Strategic engagement plans have been developed for key regional countries. Regular coordination between posts and London is tracked via regular calls and bilateral discussions with key regional teams. The Foreign Secretary has been clear; Sudan is a priority across the FCDO Network – and regular DG chaired meetings track progress across the department on its Sudan related goals. Regional considerations have been developed and circulated to posts for consideration and incorporation into Posts’ Country Business Plans across the region in support of the UK’s priority aims in Sudan. This is the most efficient and effective way of ensuring accountability and resourcing across the region for delivering on FCDO Sudan-related objectives.

Alongside this, in Chad and South Sudan, programming continues to balance support to Sudanese refugees and displaced people with the needs of host populations given the high levels of humanitarian need. Chad is hosting over 1.3 million Sudanese refugees, over 300,000 Chadian returnees, and the humanitarian situation remains extremely serious. UK ODA to Chad has grown from £19.4 million in 2023 to £56 million in 2025, and the UK has become one of the largest humanitarian donors providing support to Sudanese refugees and Chadian host communities. Similarly in South Sudan, the UK is also one of the largest humanitarian donors and all funding is being prioritised towards areas of greatest need. This includes border regions most directly affected by displacement from Sudan, while maintaining broader humanitarian and resilience support across the country – given over 70% of the whole population are in need of humanitarian aid. In 2025 alone UK funding to WFP in South Sudan delivered emergency food assistance to 1.1 million people.

Recommendation 3

Recommendation 3: Align delivery capacity with ministerial ambition by backing Sudan’s priority country status with multi-year, protected funding and adequate capacity to deliver effectively.

The Government has increased its diplomatic and humanitarian role in Sudan, in keeping with the Foreign Secretary’s ambition. Policy, programming, and diplomacy have been cohered around clear objectives: working to bring the conflict to an end, strengthening protection for civilians, and delivering life-saving assistance with a focus on hard-to-reach locations. As per the review’s recommendation, a regional approach to UK objectives has driven collective ownership and prioritisation of the conflict.

Last year, the Prime Minister committed to continuing to play a leading humanitarian role in Sudan. A Written Ministerial Statement from the Foreign Secretary on 19 March 2026 further confirmed that the UK is fully protecting its commitment to Sudan over the spending review period. On 15 April 2026, at the UK co-hosted Berlin Sudan conference, the Foreign Secretary announced protected funding for Sudan of £146 million for the financial year 2026/27, maintaining the same level as 2025/26. The final country level spend for the Spending Review period will be announced in the FCDO’s annual report and accounts this summer. This multi-year commitment to protected funding has allowed the UK to sign multi-year agreements with partners where possible, providing them with longer term predictability and enabling partners to better reach those in the most urgent need, including the hardest-to-reach parts of Sudan.

To meet the scale of the crisis, head on, at the direction of the Foreign Secretary both the British Office Sudan (BOS) and the Sudan Unit at HQ have increased staffing. More than 15 additional staff have been surged in to support the response, including dedicated humanitarian expertise, advisers on atrocity prevention, economic development and reconstruction. As ICAI is aware, the FCDO is going through a modernisation and restructuring process to ensure it is more agile, technologically enabled, and focused on the UK’s key strategic priorities, while operating within the parameters of the Spending Review settlement. The FCDO is taking steps to retain critical skills and expertise to safeguard the quality and effectiveness of UK aid.

Recommendation 4

Recommendation 4: Adopt a more agile and coherent delivery model for fragile and conflict affected environments, to maximise agility in dynamic contexts.

The Government recognises that an agile and dynamic response to the crisis in Sudan is dependent on having the right expertise and resources in the right places. This requires agile staffing, travel and resourcing.

On staffing: the FCDO has continued to use surge mechanisms to address critical capacity gaps and has focused on deploying staff with prior experience in fragile and conflict-affected settings. The FCDO has combined this agility with the expertise brought by its country-based staff who have in-depth contextual knowledge and strong relationships on the ground. As part of the staffing uplift and recognising that the situation in Port Sudan has somewhat stabilised, BOS is now attempting to recruit two additional Sudan-based roles.

Since the last update, BOS staff have travelled on multiple occasions to Port Sudan for diplomatic engagement. In addition, an in-person assessment of security and logistics in Khartoum was completed in April 2026, the first in three years, and the first step towards regular travel to Khartoum. This should enable further and broader international engagement.

Finally, the UK has also shown increased agility in delivery by adapting funding, approvals and operational planning to ensure its programming responds to rapid contextual changes. This has included bringing forward funding to key humanitarian partners, e.g. fast-tracking a £10 million contribution to the Sudan Humanitarian Fund in early October 2025, as conditions deteriorated in North Darfur, and using emergency disbursement mechanisms in November 2025 to allocate £7.5 million from the pipeline HELP-S humanitarian programme to respond to urgent needs in Tawila, Darfur. Unusually, this has required recourse to air supplies of emergency humanitarian supplies – the UK rapidly stood up three UK-funded airlifts of lifesaving WASH and shelter supplies in April 2026 into Chad and on to Tawila when the dire level of humanitarian need was escalated to the FCDO by international NGO partners. Alongside ensuring flexibility in the it’s humanitarian response, the UK is expanding its focus on resilience where this aligns with the needs of local communities e.g. through Collective Sudan (formally the Cash Consortium of Sudan). Finally, the UK is also engaging with multilateral and international financial institutions on longer-term recovery pathways and pushing for greater geographic equity in where they operate.

Recommendation 5

Recommendation 5: Support the UK’s localisation commitment by increasing direct funding to local organisations, simplifying compliance procedures, fostering long-term partnerships and strengthening local leadership of humanitarian response and resilience building.

To help deliver support to the hardest-to-reach areas the UK has led the international community’s efforts to expand funding to local responders. This work has taken on increased importance as the parties continue to impede the delivery of lifesaving aid via NGOs – whether national and international – and UN operations.

After piloting support to frontline and local responders through locally led pooled funds last year, the UK has significantly increased its support to these models. In April, the Foreign Secretary announced that the UK would be doubling its support to local responders from £6.5 million to £15 million this year. The FCDO will continue to increase its support to local actors, with the aim that at least 30% of humanitarian funding by 2029 is channelled to locally led initiatives. The FCDO maintains that support to local actors is most effective when high quality, flexible funding that empowers local decision makers is prioritised over volume or directness of funding.

The FCDO recognises that this needs to be complemented by international organisations with higher absorptive capacity, and that the presence of international actors can help to provide a degree of coordination and protection to the vital work of local actors. Where possible, the FCDO has simplified compliance processes to improve access to UK ODA for local actors. For example, for UK funding to ERRs the FCDO has aligned its compliance requirements to the planning and monitoring framework developed by ERRs themselves. The FCDO maintains that it is right to maintain strong oversight and compliance mechanisms given the importance of providing assurance that UK taxpayers money is being spent and managed robustly.

In December 2025, the Government recognised ICAI’s finding that Sudanese diaspora groups within and outside the UK had expressed desire for deeper engagement with HMG. Over the past six months, dedicated resource has been invested to scale up the FCDO’s engagement with the Sudanese diaspora in the UK and the region. Both Ministers and senior officials meet periodically with diaspora representatives and work is underway to establish a more regular engagement forum that enables diaspora communities to engage more substantively with officials on key issues. In April 2026, the FCDO co-hosted an event bringing together UK-based diaspora and civil society members to commemorate the third anniversary of the conflict which was attended by both Baroness Chapman and the Foreign Secretary. The FCDO has aligned its engagement across the UK and the region to ensure a joined-up approach, enabling the Government to draw more effectively on the depth of expertise, networks and insight within the Sudanese diaspora in support of UK policy objectives.

Recommendation 6

Recommendation 6: Address the need for more targeted programming for priority gender-related challenges in Sudan and assess how well the current mainstreaming approach is delivering results for women and girls.

Earlier this year, the Foreign Secretary made Women and Girls a priority across the entire Department – but nowhere is this more critical than in our work on Sudan. Women and girls are enduring intolerable the violence in Sudan and the UK has played a significant role in keeping public attention focused on the situation. For example the FCDO organised a UNSC briefing on Sudan by female Sudanese civil society expert Hala Al-Karib in February 2026, hosted a public event in Berlin in March 2026 for Special Envoy Harriet Harman to highlight issues for women and girls in Sudan, and set up an event for HRH the Duchess of Wessex to meet Sudanese female civil society leaders during her visit to Nairobi in February 2026 to discuss their work on the frontlines of the humanitarian response. The Foreign Secretary has prioritised hearing the voices of Sudanese women and girls both at the border of Sudan in eastern Chad and via engagement with Sudanese activists in London and the region so she can bear witness to their experience and regularly does so including in her Oral Statement to the Houses of Parliament on her return from eastern Chad on 5 February.

Also in February, while visiting the Sudan-Chad border, the Foreign Secretary launched the Healing, Outreach, Empowerment and Protection – Sudan (HOPE-S) programme, a new £20 million multi-year programme aimed at addressing the physical and psychological needs of survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) and conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in in targeted states. The call for proposals was launched in April, and bids are currently being reviewed. The UK is also supporting a strengthened protection response in Sudan under the Humanitarian Emergency and Longer-term Planning – Sudan (HELP-S) programme. This includes funding channelled more directly to women-led organisations through the FCDO’s partnership with a non-UN led pooled fund. This work reflects on the lessons learnt from a decade long partnership with the UN and Sudanese civil society, which helped to tackle female genital mutilation and early enforced marriage through community mobilisation, behaviour change and institutional reform in the health sector. This led to real progress: over 3,000 communities in eastern Sudan were reached, FGM was outlawed in 2020, and around 5,000 girls’ clubs were set up and continue to operate. It cannot be ignored that the conflict and economic crisis in Sudan have set back this progress, but the FCDO are drawing on the lessons and approaches developed over the past decade to adapt its response, including through the HOPE-S programme, to address rising gender-based violence and increasing rates of child marriage in this changing context.

Alongside this targeted programming, progress has been made on embedding meaningful gender mainstreaming across the FCDO’s programmatic and policy portfolio. BOS is in the process of developing a cross-cutting Women, Girls and Inclusion Strategy, which will set out the Government’s priorities, and improve coordination across BOS, thematic teams and desk, and act as a communication tool to external stakeholders. A monthly platform for bringing together key internal teams working on Women and Girls has been established to maximise the impact of collaborative efforts. The FCDO is using Gender Equality, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) analysis to directly inform programme design across the portfolio and support targeted research on women’s decision-making, the safeguarding of women and girls, and effective responses to CRSV. The GEDSI analysis will be refreshed towards the end of the year, or sooner if there is a change in the context. The UK is also pushing for gender-inclusive political participation, peacebuilding and mediation, and delivering meaningful opportunities for women’s empowerment and access to basic services through UK contributions to multilateral agencies in Sudan.

In the original response, the Government reaffirmed the UK’s longstanding commitment to atrocity prevention and set out its intention to launch a dedicated community protection programme. In October 2025, the UK signed agreements with two experienced conflict mediation NGOs for projects focused on improving safety for communities that had been affected by conflict. Partners work closely with communities and local groups to strengthen understanding of International Humanitarian Law, equipping them with the knowledge and tools to identify violations and advocate effectively at local, national and international levels. They also collect high-quality information on community needs and risk patterns to inform and strengthen the UK’s response to the conflict. A core element of this work is dedicated support to women-led groups, ensuring women are meaningfully involved at every stage of planning and decision-making.

Recommendation 7

Recommendation 7: Use learning from the Sudan conflict as an opportunity to rethink and adapt UK international leadership on mobilising and coordinating the international response to major crises, given severe global funding pressures, a shifting donor landscape and rising humanitarian need.

The Government agrees that the Sudan conflict offers an important opportunity to rethink how the UK helps mobilise and coordinate international responses to major crises, particularly at a time of rising humanitarian need, tighter global funding and changes in the donor landscape. The UK sees Sudan as critical to the success of the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) humanitarian reset given the scale of need and response, and are working closely with colleagues in the central humanitarian department and UK Missions in New York and Geneva to support delivery of this, including through the UK’s increased funding to local actors, channelling support to the OCHA-led Sudan Humanitarian (pooled) Fund (SHF), and supporting more effective coordination. BOS continues to work closely with London HQ teams to feed areas of best practice and concern from Sudan into wider FCDO approaches on how to work in a major crisis.

Sudan’s inclusion as a case study in FCDO’s FCAS Framework is being used to sense-check current programme design within the BOS, ensuring interventions remain feasible in active conflict. Externally, it is informing engagement with multilateral partners on portfolio design for IDA and ADF windows, supporting more realistic, flexible and politically informed approaches to economic support. The case study will also be used to inform peer learning across conflict-affected FCDO posts.

As Chair of both the Heads of Cooperation-level Core Donor Working Group and the Humanitarian Donor Working Group, the UK has continued to convene regular discussions on how donors can collectively ensure that UK can support and enable the most impactful response in Sudan. Meetings have included a discussion in November 2025 with the World Bank and African Development Bank regarding their portfolios in Sudan including the importance of ensuring geographic equity. It also includes discussions on donor funding allocations in March 2026 following confirmation of FCDO and EU Directorate General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) bilateral budgets, to share information on priorities and ensure that all donors could make decisions on their own allocations to ensure complementarity where possible and avoid duplication. The groups are also used to coordinate engagement with the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, ensuring that the donor community speaks with one voice. UK funding is used to complement other donors – prioritising funding to partners who are able to focus on needs-based interventions in the hardest-to-reach areas and increasing support to local actors.

The Government thanks ICAI for its continued engagement and constructive challenge, which plays an important role in strengthening the effectiveness of the UK’s response in Sudan.