United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is releasing his recommendations on Monday on how to protect the millions of Sudanese caught in the civil war. Humanitarian groups outside the UN have been united in calling for a peacekeeping or civilian protection force to be deployed in the country, and, without any possibility of a ceasefire in sight, are heavily disappointed by the failure of Guterres to demand a mission to safeguard civilians.
Guterres’s recommendations are embedded in an extensive report to the Security Council on the 18-month-old war, rife with details of the horrors and complexities of the conflict. The secretary-general put the report together with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The process excluded the Department of Peace Operations. (Ramtane Lamamra, the UN personal envoy for Sudan, declined to comment to PassBlue on the secretary-general’s report.)
In a draft PassBlue received last week, recommendations that made the cut range from monitoring and reporting of implementation of the Jeddah declaration; boosting the work of the fact-finding missions; cooperating with the African Union; and financial and logistical support for community initiatives.
While Guterres nods to the call from Sudanese civilians, civil society actors, international human rights organizations and the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan “for the deployment of some form of impartial force to protect civilians,” he decides that “the conditions do not exist for the successful deployment of a United Nations force to protect civilians in the Sudan.”
Activists and supporting organizations are saying that it’s urgent to at least put that option on the table precisely because so much must be done to make it work, and they criticize the UN’s failure to protect civilians when their own country is unwilling to take that responsibility itself. The release of Guterres’s announcement is considered cruelly ironic, with a deadly increase in fighting by both parties, the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces, in just the past 10 days.
Kholood Khair, a research and policy specialist with a think tank called Confluence Advisory, warns of “a huge protection vacuum in Sudan right now,” which is only getting worse. “The timing of the secretary-general’s recommendations,” she said in an interview after PassBlue saw an advance copy, “shows that the UN can’t adequately respond to what’s going on in Sudan.” (Guterres was required to make recommendations on the protection of civilians through Security Council Resolution 2736, adopted in July.)
Recently, fighting has picked up in Khartoum, the capital; south of the city in Al Jazeera; and in Darfur. It is expected to increase drastically as the dry season begins. The overall conditions amount to devastating effects for civilians, who are victims of reckless bombing by both factions as well as of deliberate attacks, particularly against women — with sexual violence rampant — and children, activists and targeted ethnic groups.
A UN peacekeeping force is considered impossible due to the absolute refusal of the leaders of the two warring parties, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto ruler and head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemedti, head of the opposing Rapid Support Forces (RSF), to come to a negotiating table or consent to an international presence.
The report thus places responsibility for protecting civilians — as required by international humanitarian law — onto local efforts. Entities like the youth-led Emergency Response Rooms, the Sudanese American Public Affairs Association, mutual-aid networks and other civil society organizations have been highly active on the ground despite enormous danger, but their numbers have been decimated by targeted killings, forced and voluntary evacuations and fear, particularly for women, who risk being raped if captured.
Sudanese activists point to the need for safety if they’re going to continue operating in the country. Khair notes the missed opportunities in the recommendations, like the failure to deploy nongovernmental organizations that specifically work on protection. “The problem with this report is that in many ways it shuts down the conversation on innovation and protection,” she said.
Critical of the trend of thinking that Sudan is a hopeless situation, Khair adds that “the concern here in the activist community is that this report will just be a way to say we’ve done what we’ve been asked to do on Resolution 2736 and it’ll just be left there.”
Many advocates also warn about the unfair expectation of heroism being placed on the already heroic responders on the ground, notably since the recommendations place the onus of protecting civilians on local organizations and community groups. While resources are critical to support their efforts, their sacrifices can go only so far.
Nathaniel Raymond works on monitoring signs of deadly combat and other attacks through the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab and advises the United States government and the UN on policy about Sudan. He’s in daily contact with activists inside the country. The most frequent question he gets is, “When should I run?”
Insisting that protection of civilians is a responsibility of the UN — including the Security Council — and that it needs to be pursued more creatively and determinedly, many experts advocate for green zones. These are safe areas where civilians could gather that are accessible by humanitarian corridors, a suggestion missing from Guterres’s report.
Julie Gregory, a research analyst with the Protecting Civilians and Human Security Program at the Stimson Center, in Washington, spoke about green zones recently during an online discussion of aid organizations, days before Guterres’s report was released. The Stimson Center has written an extensive report on the last mission, UNITAMS, a transition operation that was flawed but can provide valuable lessons.
“We cannot expect any type of force, UN or otherwise, to be able to provide comprehensive protection of civilians across the country,” Gregory said of potential safe zones. However, she proposes “targeted approaches to protection at the moment until we can achieve cessation of hostilities or a ceasefire agreement.”
This approach, she adds, “would be gathering together conflict-affected populations in key locations,” such as “around an airport transit hub, and ensuring that these civilians remain protected.”
Most experts think a protective force would be necessary and is a problem to solve, but ultimately could be a stepping stone to a more complete peacekeeping mission.
Another glaring failure in the document, activists say, is meaningful criticism on weapons flow into Sudan from other countries. It is well documented who is sending weapons, some of whom are engaged in fighting what is being called a proxy war, yet no names are listed in Guterres’s document.
Human Rights Watch, who issued a strong set of recommendations preceding Guterres’s announcement, listed the United Arab Emirates, China, Russia, Iran and Serbia in a growing compilation of countries supplying arms to one or the other side. PassBlue reported in June about Sudan’s accusations of UAE’s continuing involvement in shipping arms to the RSF, violating an arms embargo in place since 2004.
Other important measures supported by civil society groups do appear in the recommendations. Monitoring of war crimes is essential, and there is a strong call to sustain the work of the Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission for Sudan, which has also called for “the deployment of an independent and impartial force with a mandate to protect civilians in Sudan.”
Designated in late 2023, the mission was only able to launch its work this spring due to money problems in the UN. There are also calls to support and promote the African Union’s own fact-finding mission.
Hanin Ahmed, an activist familiar with the terrain in Sudan who is now based in New York City, has been involved in Emergency Response Rooms since the first month of the war, in April 2023. She had to flee two months into the war, when she learned her name was on a target list.
Ahmed notes that even the threat of monitoring can help ensure accountability and deterrence among the warring parties. When the US government was evacuating their people from the American embassy in Khartoum, she points out, “they told the SAF and RSF, we are watching you from the satellites,” to discourage attacks. She adds that such warnings could be used more to protect civilians.
Ahmed also wants attention paid to other traditional connections and methods, such as mutual-aid groups using Sufi passes — documents from local religious leaders — “because in my community, those people have an influence on officials on both sides. And sometimes, the soldiers listen to them.”
All these ideas point to possibilities missing from Guterres’s recommendations, described by many experts as unambitious. Laetitia Bader, the Horn of Africa director for Human Rights Watch, minces no words.
“There’s definitely been a complete absence of the secretary-general himself on the file on Sudan,” she said. “And for us, the biggest absence is obviously that we would have wanted him to put the recommendation of a protection of civilian mission in his recommendations,” adding that “he could have caveated the complexities,” rather than let them tank the whole proposition.
“But it’s the Security Council that has the responsibility to protect civilians,” she said, pointing to next steps for the recommendations.
“What’s key now is what the United Kingdom will do in November” — when it assumes the monthly rotating chair of the Council — “and ultimately, there is enough emphasis in the secretary-general’s report on why a mission is needed for them to pick that up and roll with it.”
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on protecting civilians in Sudan?
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Maria Luisa Gambale, a graduate of Harvard University, lives in New York City. In addition to writing, she produces film and media projects and is director of the 2011 film “Sarabah,” about the Senegalese rapper-activist Sister Fa. She has produced and directed video for National Geographic, ABC News, The New York Times and Fusion Network. Gambale’s work in all media can be viewed at www.veradonnafilms.com.
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Let us stop repeating the same errors, doing the same thing again and again and looking for another result is insanity (Einstein said so). How many peacekeeping forces/missions the world has known and how many have been successful? Zero in Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Mali, Lebanon, etc. Our world needs 3 things from the UN: Promotion of Peace through economical, political and equality/justice/rights-based approches -Early Detection and Prevention of potential Conflicts/Wars-Terrorism—- and Combattant Forces to FIGHT and impose PEACE
Appreciate your comment, and your insights. I don’t think it’s wrong to point this out, although I’m not sure if more combatant forces are the answer. However, it’s worth amplifying what groups on the ground are saying could help because every situation is unique. Learning from the past is critical, but so is learning from the present, even if it’s not the final word.