Crowdsourcing #safety: How Twitter is helping civilians in Sudan

World
By William

A high school building housing Kenyan teachers and 15 families began to shake as airstrikes and artillery stormed the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.

The stranded group began to run out of food and water as fighting between the Sudanese army and its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) intensified, but no help was able to reach them. action.

“We couldn’t contact them and the Red Cross couldn’t contact them,” Jia El Hassan, who heads the network and uses an alias for security reasons, told Al Jazeera.

Finally, the network sent a group of men to check the perimeter of the building and help the trapped people flee on foot.

“They escaped on foot because we couldn’t send a car — any car that entered that area was bombed,” said El Hassan.

The network — a reincarnation of an earlier network — began rolling out critical updates to Twitter Spaces, the social media platform’s feature for live audio conversations, on the first day of the conflict, April 15.

Some people on Twitter Spaces were not new to organizing grassroots movements, but had led activist groups during the 2019 uprising that toppled former President Omar al-Bashir.

Many activists, El Hassan said, were killed or forced to leave during that uprising. Today, there are about 120 people on the ground in Khartoum, a fraction of the 4,000 who helped organize rescue teams in the past, she said.

Despite the many people leaving, the network has helped hundreds of people leave the capital or get essential supplies — from medicines, to food, to gasoline — over the past week and they are using Twitter to track down more people in need.

“A lot of the cases we get go like this: I’m stuck in this situation. I have no food, I have no water and my phone is about to die,” explains El Hassan.

That’s when her team scours Twitter to find someone close to the captive who can provide information on everything from how safe the area is to whether any supermarkets are open.

If there is heavy fighting, or if a person in need of emergency supplies is unable to leave their residence for any reason, the network will arrange for a driver to deliver the supplies, as well as providing gasoline for the driver if necessary , she said.

People have also reached out to the network via Twitter to offer additional medical or food supplies to others in need.

El Hassan, who has experience coaching businesses and brands on how to use Twitter Spaces professionally, communicates with the network of citizens providing help on the ground primarily through Telegram, which she says is the safest channel.

Sudanese abroad help from a distance

Some of those who help do so from abroad, such as Mohammed Hassan, a Sudanese doctor who currently practices in a government hospital in Saudi Arabia – and who, had it not been for the conflict, would soon have started his residency in Sudan.

Hassan became acquainted with the network through Twitter Spaces and has assisted medical inquiries from people in need as the health situation in Sudan continues to deteriorate.

During the live Twitter Spaces conversations at the start of the conflict, there were a lot of people asking where to find things like medicine, food and areas with electricity, Hassan said.

“So we thought maybe we could create a group to reach out and match people’s needs with the resources we find online,” Hassan told Al Jazeera, adding that they’ve built a database of resources for people by scrape messages on Twitter and Facebook.

Hassan is one of many doctors who provide medical information online and sometimes put people in touch with local doctors who can assist the needy and treat minor injuries.

The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors and the Sudan Doctors Union have estimated that 70 percent, or 39 of 59 hospitals, in Khartoum and nearby states have had to halt operations since the outbreak of the conflict.

Crowdsourcing security

As the fighting raged, the network first provided information on safe corridors from the capital, relying on civilian connections to provide security intelligence.

But as the situation became more volatile and many people died, the network stopped posting escape routes.

“We would tell people this is a safe passage and literally five minutes later they are shooting everyone in the street,” said El Hassan, adding that people were shot while using some of the passages posted on Twitter.

But people are still using the social media site to look for escape routes, said Amin Alsamani, who is not connected to El Hassan’s network.

“Anyone who wants to get out of Khartoum [can ask] about safe roads and travel stations that [are operating]and he can find someone on Twitter who goes to the same area,” Alsamani told Al Jazeera.

Alsamani, who lives in Omdurman, Khartoum’s northern sister city, has set up a series of hashtags on the social networking site starting with “need” to find those in need and provide them with food, water and anything else needed . The hashtags have really taken off and are now widely used.

Translation: Guys, can someone help transfer Zein [mobile phone] credits? #Need_Khartoum

“A hashtag has been activated on Twitter regarding the needs of [each] region,” he said, adding that hashtags for each area help people connect with resources such as medicine, food, water, gasoline, housing and even missing loved ones.

“If you don’t die from a bullet or an explosion, you die from hunger and thirst,” Alsamani said of the importance of helping people.

While these civilian networks have helped many since the outbreak of the conflict, those involved say they cannot support themselves and need humanitarian organizations to intervene.

Power outages have been going on since the start of hostilities, which have disabled the Internet connection and made it difficult to operate the network.

El Hassan added that the civilians she works with do not have the infrastructure or supplies that major humanitarian organizations do, and are risking everything to help.

“I would like those organizations on the ground to just get to work,” she insisted. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

You might also like More from author