Joint Statement of Sudanese and International Civil Society Organizations
30 October 2024
After 18 months of conflict, the situation has deteriorated significantly, with civilians in regions like Darfur, Al Gezira, Khartoum, and Kordufan, among other areas of Sudan, facing constant threats to their lives and left trapped with no safe passage or protected zones. Due to institutional impunity, a lack of media coverage, widespread misinformation, and deliberate disinformation, Sudanese civilians’ suffering remains grossly overlooked, leading to a climate that allows further aggravation of these violations.
The recent increase in fighting over the past weeks only serves as a showcase to highlight the discernible escalating risks and threats to civilians’ safety, with the warring parties showing next-to-nothing genuine commitment or interest in ensuring their protection. Meanwhile, the current international response continues to fall short of safeguarding civilians.
The international community and stakeholders focus their attention and efforts on a critical and undeniable concern, which is humanitarian access and humanitarian aid delivery. However, there is a foremost priority that is being deprioritized and not adequately addressed, which is the protection of civilians. The logical precedence is to protect the lives of those in need of humanitarian aid in order to ensure that humanitarian processes are meaningful and do not serve as political window dressing.
We call for a paradigm shift in the discourse and processes addressing the Sudanese crisis, placing the protection of civilians as the core of efforts to mitigate the crisis and revitalizing all efforts to take concrete and actionable steps to achieve its effective realization.
This approach must be grounded in the stringent and non-negotiable enforcement of the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) relevant to armed conflict. Furthermore, this approach ought to tackle the predicaments of Sudanese civilians ensnared in combat zones, regions controlled by any of the parties, and the Sudanese refugees in the neighboring countries. Regrettably, the IHL obligations have been significantly overlooked and politicized in the past efforts to end the war in Sudan since its eruption in April 2023, resulting in further suffering. This needs to change.
We urge actors at all levels of the international community, namely the African Union, with its High-Level Panel on Sudan and its Presidential Committee; members of the UN Security Council, the UN Secretary General, and all other concerned actors to adopt this shift in the paradigm, delivering on a concrete set of objectives, priorities, and means on protecting civilians, including the physical safeguarding of civilians affected by the conflict.
Political discourse limited to adopting ceasefire as a prerequisite and only means for civilian protection endangers more lives and enables the political exploitation of this humanitarian priority. International players are not mere observers; their inaction exacerbates the persistent misery. We implore stakeholders to adopt and publicly call for a concrete, actionable framework for the physical protection of Sudanese civilians. In addition, to engage in consultations among themselves and with the Sudanese stakeholders to map and identify the feasible modalities for attaining this purpose.
Signatories: