How Humanitarian Organisations Handle Logistics in Unstable Regions

Tony Miller

Oct 7

7 min read

Humanitarian organisations handle logistics in unstable regions by assuming the route will fail and planning around it: stock held close to need, several transport modes, shared coordination through the Logistics Cluster, and suppliers already inside the country. In July 2025 a roughly 4,000-tonne convoy in South Sudan was stopped despite advance clearances.

What actually goes wrong when logistics meets instability?

Cargo stops moving for reasons that have nothing to do with the cargo. In South Sudan the July 2025 OCHA Humanitarian Access Snapshot is a clean illustration. The Bor to Malakal river convoy, about 4,000 metric tonnes on two barges and 14 boats, had secured its clearances and given its notifications at state and local level. It was still blocked at the New Fangak government checkpoint in Jonglei after 13 days of travel, and the entire convoy was left stalled at Wasket.

The same report describes the other failure modes a logistician plans for. Heavy rainfall made major roads impassable in many areas. Checkpoint fees on the Nile corridor rose from 500,000 SSP to 12 million SSP, which OCHA says effectively halted most river movements. New travel permit requirements appeared in Upper Nile, Jonglei and Unity. In Baliet County, local authorities seized two humanitarian speedboats. In total OCHA recorded 60 access incidents that month.

Instability rarely closes a country outright. It makes each leg slower, dearer and less predictable, unevenly, so the plan that worked last month fails on a different leg this month.

Why are staff and assets at risk, not just cargo?

Because the people moving the cargo are exposed to the same conditions. OCHA's World Humanitarian Day 2025 statement for South Sudan reported over 200 incidents of direct violence against humanitarians and their assets between January and July 2025, up from 176 over the same period the year before, and said escalating insecurity had forced 56 humanitarian workers to relocate from their operational areas.

The November 2025 access snapshot shows what that looks like at the level of a logistics lead's desk: 58 access incidents in a single month, two aid workers abducted on the Yei to Morobo road, a vehicle forcibly seized in Upper Nile, and 14 staff relocated from Pieri and Lankien to Juba. Every one of those events is a delivery that did not happen on the day planned, and several remove a vehicle or a driver from the fleet.

Duty of care therefore sits inside the logistics plan. Route choice, convoy timing and staff relocation triggers are supply-chain decisions.

How do humanitarian organisations plan for it?

Four moves recur in every well-run operation we supply.

Hold stock close to need before it is needed. Pre-positioning turns a reactive, route-dependent delivery into a short local movement. The aim is to be in a position where a closed road delays a dispatch rather than a response.
Buy inside the country where the product exists. Every border crossing, port and long road leg is another place for cargo to be stopped. Where the product exists locally, that is almost always the lower-risk route.
Keep more than one way to move cargo. Road, river and air each fail for different reasons, in different seasons. The cost of holding a second option is real, and we put numbers on it in road versus air inside South Sudan.
Coordinate, because no single agency can see the whole route. That is the job of the Logistics Cluster.

What does the Logistics Cluster do in an unstable region?

It makes logistics a shared problem rather than forty separate ones. The Logistics Cluster brings together humanitarian organisations, UN agencies, NGOs and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, with the World Food Programme as global lead agency, designated by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee. It does three things: it coordinates through regular meetings, it runs country-based information management so that route, access and constraint information is collected and shared, and it provides common logistics services such as warehousing and cargo transport on a free-to-user or cost-recovery basis, for a limited duration only.

For a buyer, two points follow. First, the Cluster's access and route information is the cheapest risk intelligence available, and a supplier who does not use it is guessing. Second, common services are deliberately temporary. They bridge a gap while commercial and in-country capacity is built, which is why the permanent answer to instability is supply that already sits inside the country.

The scale of that bridge is visible in South Sudan. OCHA's 2025 humanitarian response review reports 8,169 metric tonnes of humanitarian cargo transported during the year, and 4.3 million people reached with assistance, 80 per cent of the 5.4 million targeted, on only US$778 million, 46 per cent of the US$1.7 billion required.

When does air become the answer?

When the road and river are closed and the cargo is light and urgent. The United Nations Humanitarian Air Service, managed by WFP, carried over 240,000 passengers and 2,500 metric tonnes of light humanitarian supplies to nearly 362 remote locations in 2025. It is a service for people and light, high-priority cargo, not a freight system for bulk stock.

Our view is that air is a bridge for critical items, never a basis for a supply plan. Bulk water treatment, pumps and storage structures are heavy and low in value per kilogram, and an air-dependent plan for them fails on cost and on capacity. The better answer for bulk goods is to make sure the stock is already in the country, which brings us to storage.

Why does in-country storage matter more in unstable regions?

Because a warehouse converts a long, fragile supply line into a short one. When the corridor from the port is cut, stock already in Juba still moves. When a county is cut off by rain, stock staged at a closer point still moves.

Storage also has to survive the setting it sits in. A structure that needs a prepared concrete base, a long build and a specialist crew is a poor fit where access is the problem. Modular and semi-permanent buildings can be erected quickly on a prepared surface, which is the use case for the Hallgruppen structures we supply through our warehousing range. Siting matters as much as the structure, especially on flood-prone ground.

Stock rotation is the other half. Held stock that expires unused is waste, so first-expired-first-out control belongs in the plan from the first pallet.

What does a full in-country chain look like in practice?

In the 2024-2025 South Sudan cholera response we ran the whole chain ourselves: procurement, customs clearance, Juba warehousing and last-mile delivery into Juba and Renk counties. That response distributed 3.28 million P&G Purifier of Water sachets to 27,344 households, and the Juba cholera case study sets out how the stages were sequenced.

The lesson is that no single stage was the hard one. Customs documentation prepared in advance meant clearance did not become the delay. Stock already in Juba meant last-mile began from a warehouse, not a port. Handling logistics in an unstable region comes down to removing the dependencies someone else can interrupt.

What should a supply lead ask a supplier before relying on them?

Five questions separate a supplier who can operate in an unstable region from one who can only quote for it.

Where is the stock today? Stock in the country and stock on a quotation are different things.
Who clears it, and how often have they done it? Customs clearance for humanitarian cargo is a repeated procedure with a known failure rate.
What is the last-mile route, and what is the fallback? A supplier should name the second route without being prompted.
Is the product authorised and traceable? Counterfeit and grey-market stock is a risk that grows when oversight is thin. Ask for proof of authorised-distributor status.
What happens when a leg fails? The answer should describe a procedure, not reassurance.

Frequently asked questions

How do humanitarian organisations handle logistics in unstable regions?

They plan for route failure: stock held close to need, in-country purchasing, more than one transport mode, and shared coordination through the Logistics Cluster. In South Sudan in July 2025, a roughly 4,000-tonne river convoy with advance clearances was blocked at a checkpoint after 13 days, which is why plans cannot rely on clearance alone.

What is crisis management logistics?

It is the part of emergency response that moves people, equipment and supplies to where they are needed under disruption. It covers procurement, transport, storage and coordination. Our overview of humanitarian logistics in crisis management covers the basics.

What does the Logistics Cluster provide?

Coordination meetings, information management and common logistics services such as warehousing and cargo transport, on a free-to-user or cost-recovery basis for a limited duration, according to the Logistics Cluster. WFP is the global lead agency.

Can UNHAS carry bulk relief stock?

No. UNHAS moves passengers and light humanitarian supplies; in 2025 it carried over 240,000 passengers and 2,500 metric tonnes of light supplies. Bulk items such as pumps, tanks and treatment chemicals need road, river or in-country stock.

How dangerous is the operating environment in South Sudan?

OCHA reported over 200 incidents of direct violence against humanitarians and their assets from January to July 2025, against 176 in the same period of 2024, and 56 humanitarian workers relocated from their operational areas.