Sudan’s Vital Humanitarian and Political Situation
The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown’s Conflict Resolution program, and the African Studies Program have partnered for the event, Sudan’s Vital Humanitarian and Political Situation, featuring Abdullahi Boru Halakhe, Mai Hassan, and Kholood Khair.
Since April 2023, Sudan has experienced a significant increase in violence, leading to an unprecedented surge in displacement and humanitarian need. Millions of people now face challenges in accessing basic services and necessities. Yet the severity of this humanitarian crisis in both Sudan and the wider region has received minimal attention. Compounded by complex geopolitical dynamics, marked by intractable conflict between the two primary warring parties and the participation of powerful external actors, the situation stands out as one of the most substantial crises the region has encountered in recent years.
Abdullahi Boru Halakhe is the senior advocate for East and Southern Africa at Refugees International. He is an African policy expert with over a decade of experience in security, conflict, human rights, refugee work, and strategic communications.
Abdullahi has worked with and advised various international organizations including the International Rescue Committee, the International Crisis Group, Amnesty International, the BBC, and the World Federation of United Nations Associations, the European Union, the African Union, USAID, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program,
He has regional and thematic expertise having worked on/in Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Chad on issues including humanitarian aid reform advocacy, refugees, internally displaced people, and security.
Abdullahi has regularly appeared in the media as an expert guest and analyst and has published some of his work in the media, including on Al Jazeera, Reuters, BBC World Service, CNN International, Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, The Independent, The German News Agency, New Zealand Public Radio, France 24, The Africa Report, African Arguments, and Think Africa Press. He has a book chapter on Kenya’s security agencies and the war in Somalia in the Oxford Handbook of Kenyan Politics.
Mai Hassan is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Faculty Director of MIT-Africa. Her first book — Regime Threats and State Solutions: Bureaucratic Loyalty and Embeddedness in Kenya — was selected as a Best Book of 2020 by Foreign Affairs, won the American Political Science Association’s 2021 Robert A Dahl Award, and was the recipient of the African Studies Association 2021 Bethwell A. Ogot Award. Her on-going research focuses on popular mobilization under autocratic repression with a focus on Sudan’s 2018-19 popular uprising. Professor Hassan has given dozens of talks about her research, including at Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. Her research has been published in numerous outlets, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. She earned her PhD in Government from Harvard University.
Kholood Khair is a Sudanese political analyst and the founding director of Confluence Advisory, a “think-and-do” tank based in Khartoum.
She is also a radio broadcaster, hosting and co-producing a weekly radio program, Spotlight 249, that is Sudan’s first English-language political discussion and debate show aimed at Sudanese youth. Khair has over a decade of experience in research, aid programming and policy in Sudan and across the Horn of Africa.
She has written for Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera English, The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and other international outlets and organizations, and has been quoted widely as a political analyst in the media, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC and NPR. She has master’s degrees in African Studies from the University of Oxford and in Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS University of London.