The Sudanese pound is not a convertible currency, and CSI must make special and sometimes difficult efforts to obtain it. The money is paid to slave retrievers, who either buy or abduct slaves from their masters and bring them back from Darfur and Kordofan to their home areas in Bahr El Ghazal. These retrievers do so at great personal risk of attack by security agents of the regime in Khartoum, which opposes their activity. When the retrievers return slaves to their homeland, the local communities assume responsibility for providing the slaves with food, shelter, and medicine until they are redeemed. However, these communities have little to give.
Many people suffer from hunger in Sudan.
Furthermore, the slave raids leave vast areas desolate and the survivors destitute. CSI helps by providing food and medicine for returning slaves. CSI also provides food and medicines for communities that have been devastated and left destitute by the slave raids. There is no guarantee that a redeemed slave could not be recaptured during a slave raid. But, to date, there has been no evidence of any freed slaves being recaptured after returning to their village.