Enabling principles scores
This report covers enabling‑environment developments from January to September 2025, with occasional references to key events that occurred prior to January 2025 where relevant. Throughout 2025, Sudan remained engulfed in a nationwide armed conflict involving the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and aligned militias. The war continued to erode the country’s political and social foundations, severely undermining fundamental freedoms and restricting the ability of civil society to operate.
In February 2025, Sudan’s SAF‑aligned government unilaterally amended the 2019 Constitutional Document, extending the transitional period by 39 months, removing references to both the SAF and RSF, increasing military representation and powers within the Sovereign Council, expanding its authority over key appointments and policy decisions, and abolishing the committee investigating the SAF‑perpetrated 2019 massacre, thereby entrenching SAF control over the transition. In a parallel move on 23 February 2025, the RSF and allied groups signed a Charter in Nairobi to establish a parallel government, a move experts warned would deepen Sudan’s de facto partition and intensify an already devastating conflict marked by atrocities. This was followed by the signing of a transitional constitution on 3 March outlining a secular, decentralised governance system, and ultimately by the formal announcement on 26 July of a parallel government headed by RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo through a newly formed Presidential Council. By late 2025, analysts described a near‑total collapse of the enabling environment for civic actors, marked by the fragmentation of state authority and the spread of “governance through violence” across large parts of the country. As a result, Sudan’s civic space was rated “closed” in the 2025 CIVICUC Monitor.
Civil society organisations faced a de facto territorial division: SAF-held areas in the east and north, and RSF-controlled zones across central and western regions. Operating in any part of the country required navigating complex and often arbitrary “triple approval” processes involving bodies such as the Humanitarian Aid Commission, the General Intelligence Service, SARHO and Military Intelligence. These procedures routinely resulted in delays, denials, or intrusive monitoring, creating an environment of acute insecurity for national civil society actors. Conditions further deteriorated following the United States’ January 2025 suspension of key funding streams and the collapse of banking systems, which left many organisations unable to pay staff or maintain even minimal operations.
Despite these pressures, local mutual‑aid structures—particularly the Emergency Response Rooms—remained the primary source of humanitarian assistance for millions of Sudanese. However, as the conflict deepened, both warring parties increasingly portrayed civic actors as foreign agents or political adversaries, contributing to a sharp rise in arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and targeted killings. Monitoring by OHCHR and independent observers confirmed the deliberate use of bureaucratic obstacles, movement restrictions, and internet shutdowns to constrict independent civic space throughout 2025.
Although international frameworks such as the 2025 Sudan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan sought to sustain support, the reality on the ground remained one of extreme repression and operational fragility. The continued survival of civil society depended largely on informal local negotiations, community solidarity networks, and the contributions of a dispersed but resilient Sudanese expert and activist diaspora.
