With war erupting in Sudan, the country’s media landscape collapsed almost overnight after the Rapid Support Forces entered Khartoum. Many journalists were left without jobs, salaries or shelter, scattered between displacement, exile and siege, as newspapers shut down and media institutions ceased to function. For many, journalism was no longer a profession but a daily struggle for survival.

In the early hours of April 15, 2023, Sudanese journalists awoke to a reality they had never anticipated. That morning was not merely the start of another working day, nor a continuation of the professional hardships they had grown used to in an unstable environment. It was a blunt declaration of the end of an entire phase of their working and social lives, coming in the wake of the Rapid Support Forces’ sweep into the capital, Khartoum.

The struggle to survive

On that day, thousands of journalists suddenly found themselves without institutions, offices, salaries, or any kind of protection against the loss of the most basic foundations of their profession. Everything that had once given them even a minimum of stability collapsed. Offices fell, printing presses stopped, newspapers ceased publication, and media workers were scattered, displaced, exiled, or trapped inside a city that had become an open and perilous theater of war. All of it happened without warning.

Before the outbreak of war, the Sudanese media landscape, despite its fragility, was still functioning. Around 30 daily and weekly newspapers were being published regularly, employing no fewer than 1,000 journalists, both staff and freelancers. Alongside them were nearly 500 journalists in public media institutions, correspondents, producers and editors, in addition to around 200 journalists spread across Sudan’s various states.

In that sense, the number of those actively practicing the profession exceeded 1,700, out of roughly 7,000 registered in the official press registry, the credential that grants legal legitimacy to work as a journalist. Those figures reflected a broad sector facing serious challenges, yet one that was active, productive and helping sustain the flow of information in the public sphere.

The first signs of catastrophe were not tied to freedom of expression or publishing restrictions. They were harsher and more immediate: Where will we sleep? What will we eat? How will we pay the rent?

Those who fled Khartoum, whether as internally displaced people or refugees, found themselves confronting a housing market whose costs were rising faster than their already fragile means could bear. As waves of displacement moved toward the Northern and River Nile states, rents soared to the point that securing even modest housing became a burden pushing the limits of the possible toward the edge of the impossible.

The beginnings of the catastrophe were not about freedom of speech or the difficulties of publication. They were far more brutal and basic: Where will we sleep? What will we eat? How will we pay the rent?

Gradually, suffering crept into the smallest details of everyday life, the kind that never appears in news bulletins, but which defines people’s lives with precision. The conversation was no longer about the future of the profession or how to reform it, but about finding a single meal to stave off hunger.

Journalist Hajar Suleiman, who remained in Khartoum throughout the period of fighting, offers a starkly painful account of her own condition and that of journalists more broadly. She says malnutrition reached life-threatening levels for some journalists: “We may find only one meal in 24 hours.”

In one of the countries of refuge, a well-known journalist says he was unable to obtain diabetes medication. Bitterly, he says they are borrowing even to buy bread, hoping that help might come from aid or from a friend working in the Gulf or in the West.

Another journalist, who had served as editor-in-chief, was forced after seeking refuge in a neighboring country to sell traditional Sudanese products. Summing up his priorities, he says his main goal is simply to pay the apartment rent; everything else comes second. It is a harsh journey from running newsrooms to searching for the day’s sustenance.

Amid this collapse, most journalists relied on sporadic support from relatives working in the Gulf or in Western countries. Important as that support was, it was neither regular nor sufficient. It resembled emergency relief more than a real solution, enough to prevent total collapse, but not enough to open any path toward lasting stability.

With the exception of a small number in government institutions, and a very limited percentage working abroad, more than 80 percent of journalists lost any form of employment with media organizations. The connection between them and publishers was severed, institutions disappeared, and responsibilities dissolved.

An Era Without Guardianship

Criticism is directed first at the state, then at the journalists’ union, and at the dysfunctional relationship between media workers and owners of institutions. Dr. Tareq Abdallah, an academic and journalist, believes the union failed to use its full potential, particularly through its ties with Arab and African organizations. He notes that journalists found themselves without support after media owners left Sudan with little concern for what had happened to their employees. As head of a professional bloc formed before the war, he reproaches the government for ignoring journalists’ most urgent needs for survival.

Journalist Hajar Suleiman agrees, and goes further, saying newspapers issued mass dismissal letters and completely abandoned their staff. Publishers, she says, left without even asking after them or making contact. She also believes, having chosen to remain in Khartoum despite the risks, that the General Union of Journalists “was absent before the war, absent during it, and continues to be absent.”

The union’s secretary-general, Salah Omar al-Sheikh, acknowledges the union’s limited role, attributing it to a state of confusion and a struggle for existence that has afflicted the body since 2019. According to al-Sheikh, that struggle weakened its resources and reduced its ability to communicate with supporting organizations.

The response of the internationally recognized government has also fallen short of the scale of the catastrophe. A small number of journalists received temporary accommodation in Port Sudan, the de facto alternative capital, while others were given symbolic stipends in return for attending press conferences. But these were limited measures that did not begin to address the roots of the crisis.

Even after the capital was retaken, little changed. A brief return visit by a number of journalists to Khartoum was not enough to create conditions that would allow work to resume, given the absence of jobs, insecurity, and weak basic services.

The war has shown most journalists that organizations, especially press organizations, speak more about freedoms at conferences than they are able to offer in concrete terms during times of crisis.

The reality is that access to humanitarian aid often required being physically present in displacement or refugee camps, something that does not fit the nature of the profession, nor the circumstances of many media workers. Sudanese journalists and their families are still living through one of the most critical moments in their history, with no clear horizon for solutions that could restore them to normal life or reopen the path toward recovering even a minimum of professional and human dignity.

It is the tragedy of a sector that suddenly found itself with no ground beneath its feet, no support to protect it, and no certainty to guide it into tomorrow.