Sudan: As Starvation Stalks 25 Million Sudanese, U.S. Invites Belligerents to Switzerland

Washington, DC — As starvation and desperation in Sudan continues to escalate after a year of conflict, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is asking the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to participate in ceasefire talks in August mediated by the United States.

“The talks in Switzerland aim to reach a nationwide cessation of violence, enabling humanitarian access to all those in need, and develop a robust monitoring and verification mechanism to ensure implementation of any agreement, Blinken said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Sudan is classified by aid agencies as the largest hunger and displacement crisis in the world. “The scale of death, suffering, and destruction in Sudan is devastating,” Blinken said. Reports from Sudanese medical professionals still inside the tattered country say the health system has collapsed, compounding the crisis

Sudan is the largest hunger and displacement crisis in the world today.

“The warring parties must take this opportunity to end fighting, continue to improve humanitarian access for the Sudanese people, and work toward a brighter future for Sudan,” U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello said in a post on X following the announcement. The African Union, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations will take part as observers, the Secretary said.

Blinken said next month’s talk would build on Saudi-led efforts that fizzled late last year. Efforts to rekindle the process in April also failed, partly due to half-hearted responses from two warring factions. Each is determined to expand areas it controls and to hold them as long as possible.

A podcast in March by the UK think-tank Chatham House, presented research on how minerals, gold, in particular, are fueling the war. On one side is the Sudan Armed Forces, an administration that Sudan’s democracy movement regards as illegitimate. On the other is a rebel militia called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), dominated by fighters who perpetrated the genocide in Darfur province from 2003 to 2005 and have resumed genocidal tactics in the current conflict. In a further complication for U.S. policy makers, the Saudis excluded Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, the latter seen as a prime supporter of the RSF.

Sudanese non-combatants – some still trying to help hungry, injured people inside the country, even as they themselves have been forced to flee back-and-forth, with no safe areas – face insurmountable obstacles. As many as 2.5 million have managed to cross borders into poorly supplied refugee camps in neighboring countries, but tens of millions remain trapped and on the run inside the country.

A few, mostly educated professionals, managed to get to Europe and elsewhere. Advocating for a durable peace, they are critical of the strategies of U.S. and other mediators. “The danger,” Kholood Khair, founding director of a Sudan-based analytical organization, said from London on a panel organized by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, “is that if they strike a deal with each other, they will turbo-charge their repressive acts against the Sudanese people”.

Talks between men with guns, with no civilians and no women participating, will not lead to durable peace.

Blinken acknowledged the criticism in his statement, saying “broader political issues” are not the aim of next month’s talks. “As the Sudanese people have long demanded, Sudan’s governance must return to civilians and civilians must play the leading role in defining a process to address political issues and restore Sudan’s democratic transition.”

A report issued this week by Médecins Sans Frontières describes in horrific detail how both the SAF and RSF and their supporters are inflicting “horrendous” violence on people across the country. Fighting has led to a collapse in the protection of civilians across the large country with communities facing “indiscriminate violence, killings, and torture”.

Khair said the lack of effective responses from U.S. and European policymakers faced with such a catastrophic humanitarian crisis reflects “a taxonomy of suffering” where Sudanese people rank at the bottom” contrasted with those in Ukraine or other European nations. Less explainable, she said, is the lack of appreciation for the geopolitical centrality of Sudan.

Those issues also were posed by Michelle Gavin, CFR’s senior fellow for Africa policy studies, and the two other panelists, Kate Almquist Knopf, a former USAID Africa official and former director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies and mission director in Sudan, and Susan Stigant, director of Africa programs at the United States Institute of Peace.

Knopf said that even if the plight of Sudan’s people isn’t considered, it is difficult to explain “the fact that we will tolerate any state collapse of this magnitude”, noting “Russia securing a port, Iran reestablishing a presence, connection across the belt of instability and coups in the Sahel, and the largest and most important maritime artery leading from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean”.  Stigant said that “seeing this as a fight between two parties doesn’t capture the complexity and the risk…”.

Gavin, a former U.S. ambassador to Botswana, said the importance of the Red Sea region to the global economy “makes it all the more puzzling that we have such an absence of strategic clarity about U.S. policy”. She said the avalanche of human suffering, despite warnings at every stage of the conflict, feels like “an ongoing testament to the failure of the world’s peace, security, humanitarian and human rights architecture”.

The avalanche of human suffering is a failure of the world’s peace and security architecture.

Another critique of the U.S.-convened talks was the absence of women. “I was just with a group of Sudanese women who came together to articulate a draft set principles and priorities of how they define security themselves.” Yet, she said, “the United States was facilitating talks between belligerents, men with guns, with no women present, with no mechanism for women’s involvement”.

Earlier this month, representatives of the two warring factions held indirect talks in Geneva focused on humanitarian assistance and protection for civilians. After 20 sessions with the delegations held separately, the UN secretary-general’s personal envoy for Sudan, Ramtane Lamamra, called the discussions a good initial step but announced no breakthroughs.

The African Union, which has stepped up efforts to resolve the conflict, convened an Inter-Sudanese Political Dialogue in Addis Ababa earlier this month, led by Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, Chair of the AU High-Level Panel on Resolution of the Conflict in Sudan.

The Sudanese groups participating produced 17 recommendations covering “ending the war, humanitarian access to relief the suffering Sudanese population, the inclusivity of the dialogue, the agenda, transitional justice, the form of transitional governance, to mention a few,” Chambas said in closing remarks. “Sudanese political and civil actors who were unable to attend the meeting” will be consulted, he said, and the Panel will continue engagement with women, youth, professional groups and traditional authorities

Last week at the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced a new package of humanitarian assistance for people affected by the conflict in Sudan, including refugees in neighboring countries.

The challenge will be getting aid to those who most need it. United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director Cindy McCain, who visited refugee camps in March, warned then that over 25 million people were “trapped in a spiral of deteriorating food security” and that “WFP is unable to get sufficient emergency food assistance to desperate communities in Sudan…because of the relentless violence and interference by the warring parties”.

Khair wants to see substantive new directions in international approaches to Sudan. “But quite frankly” she said, with Sudan having “such a little footprint in both media circles and in policy circles, I don’t think we’re going to see that anytime soon”.

A few hours after the Blinken statement, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the RSF leader, in a post on X welcomed the invitation and said “I declare our participation in the upcoming ceasefire talks. The SAF, which did not immediately respond – as was anticipated by State Department officials involved in the planning – are under pressure from several allied countries to participate.