The Emergency Response Rooms are a network of mutual-aid groups delivering life-saving help amid Sudan's civil war. They were the bookmakers' favourite for the 2025 Nobel peace prize, which instead went to María Corina Machado.
The ERRs are made up of more than 700 small, decentralised groups of local volunteers. Most are young women. They feed the hungry, restore electricity, fix water wells and evacuate civilians. Instead of formal leaders they have a council whose elected representatives serve eight months at most to prevent vested interests from emerging.
The ERRs were forged from Sudan's "resistance committees", autonomous networks of protesters who in 2019 helped topple Omar al-Bashir, the country's former dictator.
The ERRs have managed to help more than 3m people. They are cost-efficient, with 95% of donations going directly to volunteers on the ground. Yet they have received less than 1% of all international aid for Sudan. After American aid was frozen in February 2025, that paltry amount shrank further, forcing hundreds of their soup kitchens to close.
He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.