The conflict in Sudan has provoked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and poses grave risks to regional – and indeed international – peace and security. Peace has proved defiantly elusive because both parties to the conflict: the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), remain locked in a zero-sum struggle for power. Having jointly overthrown Sudan’s civilian transition in 2021, they have been unwilling to loosen their own grip on power, even if it comes at the expense of Sudan and its people, writes Sir Stewart Eldon, Former UK Permanent Representative to NATO (2006-2010), UK Ambassador to Ireland (2003-2006) and UK Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, New York (1998-2002),
That failure of integration ignited the war that has raged since April 2023. Too much political power, economic control, and personal survival is now at stake for either side to concede easily. With both leaderships under international sanctions and facing credible allegations of war crimes, Sudan’s reintegration into the international community looks increasingly remote without determined action, both internationally and within Sudan itself.
The human cost of this impasse is devastating; eventually those responsible for it will need to be held to account. The SAF has conducted repeated indiscriminate aerial bombardments of densely populated urban areas, including markets and residential neighbourhoods in Khartoum, Darfur and Kordofan, actions documented by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch as likely violations of international humanitarian law.
The RSF, meanwhile, carries the legacy and methods of the Janjaweed militias. Their systematic campaigns of ethnically targeted killings against non-Arab communities in Darfur have led US authorities to formally determine they amount to genocide. Both sides have engaged in summary executions, reprisals against civilians in recaptured territory, and the widespread use of sexual violence, torture, and arbitrary detention as tools of war. In such conditions, peace is both hard to negotiate, and almost impossible to maintain.
It is right that in these circumstances considerable international effort has been devoted to find a way forward. In September, Foreign Ministers of the Quad (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and US) set out five principles regarding the ending of the conflict. In summary, these include the following: maintain Sudan’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity; acceptance that there is no military solution to the conflict; allow rapid humanitarian access and assistance and ensure the protection of civilians; guarantee Sudan’s future governance is for the Sudanese people to decide through an inclusive and transparent transition process, not controlled by any warring party; and that an end to external military support for both sides is essential to ending the conflict. The Quad called for a humanitarian truce, initially for three months, to allow these principles to be put into practice.
Outside Sudan, the Quad’s approach has gained significant international support. On 10 November, for example, the foreign ministers of European countries, alongside Canada and Australia, issued a joint statement urging the parties to agree to a ceasefire and a three-month humanitarian truce, in line with the Quad’s proposals. On 16 December, the UN Security Council held an informal interactive dialogue convened by the UK and Denmark focusing on the urgent need to advance a durable, sustainable, and inclusive peace.
The starting point for a realistic path to peace must be a shift in political logic. As long as active fighting continues, both the SAF and the RSF will continue to treat battlefield momentum as their primary negotiating leverage. That means an urgent truce must come first.
Ideally that truce should be robust, facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid and the protection of civilians. But, though less than desirable, even unstable ceasefires can create space for negotiation. Trust will not be created overnight but the possibility of peace can only really be explored in the absence of fighting, and there is an overriding need to alleviate the current humanitarian suffering.
Next, as the Quad have said, there must be the establishment of a civilian-led transitional authority to oversee the move away from military rule. For any settlement to endure, it must have credibility with Sudan’s population, particularly the civil resistance committees who drove the 2019 revolution. The SAF and RSF could not be entirely excluded at this stage; power realities cannot be wished away. But their participation must be carefully limited to figures who retain influence within their respective factions but are no longer directing military operations. This in no way legitimises armed rule but gradually removes force from decision making.
Self-evidently none of this will be viable without sustained humanitarian access. A ceasefire that does not deliver food, shelter, safety and medical care will rapidly lose legitimacy. Sudan is facing one of the world’s worst displacement and hunger crises, with over 13 million people displaced and large parts of the country at risk of famine. During a transitional period, humanitarian corridors must be protected and aid dispersed unhindered.
For years to come, Sudan’s antagonists may be forced to sit across the negotiating table from one another, reaching reluctant compromises in the service of the country’s future. But the burden of rebuilding the country should not rest with those who brought it to ruin. That task must fall to a new generation of leaders: civilians with legitimacy, untainted by atrocity, trusted by a population exhausted by war. Peace will only endure when governance is exercised in the interests of the people, rather than seized for personal survival or gain.
For its part the international community has a duty to support Sudan’s path toward peace, stability, and a civilian-led future and keeping the country from sliding even further into fragmentation, extremism and collapse.
