Efforts to bring about truces in Sudan are continuing to hit a dead end, with fighting continuing and worsening the country’s dire humanitarian situation. Renewed efforts, including by the United States, to implement temporary truces to allow desperately needed aid into the country have repeatedly failed. Fighting has intensified in recent months, with the United Nations warning that the humanitarian system in Sudan is on the brink of collapse.
Aid groups have urged immediate truces to alleviate the humanitarian crisis, but rival factions continue to maintain their momentum on the battlefield and break local ceasefires. Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023 after months of tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) group. It expanded into 13 out of Sudan’s 18 states and has forcibly displaced 14 million people, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and killing tens of thousands of people.
Several international mediation efforts have attempted to broker ceasefires to end fighting and bolster humanitarian efforts, amid cases of starvation. The first major initiative, the Jeddah Declaration in May 2023, was mediated and guaranteed by the US and Saudi Arabia. While it temporarily facilitated limited humanitarian access to affected communities, it soon collapsed after both factions repeatedly violated the terms.
Regional efforts via the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union (AU) similarly failed when localised, short-term truces broke down, sometimes just hours after they were implemented. The US has significantly ramped up its diplomatic engagement over the past year, spearheading the Aligned for Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan (ALPS) initiative in Geneva. Alongside Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, the UN, and the AU, Washington has pushed for direct negotiations and localised humanitarian pauses.
Responding to the escalating crisis, US Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs Massad Boulos last week committed $375m to humanitarian efforts in Sudan and reiterated that “there is no military solution to this conflict.” The US has reportedly renewed calls for a 90-day humanitarian truce in Sudan and for allowing affected communities to access emergency aid. Fighting continues on multiple fronts in Sudan. In South Kordofan, the SAF has claimed gains, while Al Jazeera sources reported that the army had repelled an attack by the RSF in Blue Nile state.
Conversely, the RSF has claimed a major victory over the army and its allies in Abu Qauod, west of El Obeid. With both sides claiming to be winning, it could make the prospects of a peaceful outcome to the war even harder to achieve. Analysts suggest the failure of these truces is ultimately tied to the political ambitions of the warring leaders – Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the SAF and the RSF’s head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.
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