In Geneva, the sixth consultative meeting to enhance coordination of peace initiatives in Sudan was launched on Wednesday, with the participation of about twenty-six countries and organisations, including the Quad, which comprises the United States, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Egypt, and the Quintet, which comprises the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, the League of Arab States and IGAD, hosted by the office of the Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General, Pekka Haavisto, in partnership with Switzerland (Sources: UN News, United Nations Office at Geneva, Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)). The meeting, as the United Nations explained, is dedicated to coordinating the mediators, so neither the Sudanese government nor the Rapid Support Forces participates in it, with its outcomes to be conveyed to them later. And here begins the question that must not be postponed: how is peace coordinated for an entire country, while the people of the country wait for its results from outside the hall?
The question is not a formal one, because civilians do not live to the rhythm of conferences. Two days before the Geneva meeting, the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei, "UNISFA", condemned drone attacks that took place on October 19 near Amiet market and Todach, and said that dozens of people were killed and injured and that the toll was likely to rise as the evacuation of victims and the search for missing persons continued (Source: UNISFA statement published via ReliefWeb, October 22). In Geneva itself, Swiss Minister of State Alexandre Fasel warned of famine-like conditions in Darfur, Kordofan and other areas, and said that the war is what drives this hunger, and that the protection of civilians and access for aid must not wait for a ceasefire or a political solution (Source: UN News, October 21).
The multiplicity of initiatives is no longer evidence of interest; it has often become part of the problem, for when platforms crowd together, Sudan turns into a file around which positions are managed, not a homeland whose people are listened to first. Coordinating the mediators is a necessary step, but it remains a first step, not a result; and its value is not measured by the number of attendees, but by its ability to produce a monitorable humanitarian truce, safe corridors that actually reach the hungry and the sick, and an independent investigation and accountability for what happened in Abyei and elsewhere, so that the targeting of civilians does not become news repeated at no cost.
And lasting peace is not built on deals between personalities, whatever their names and positions, but on state institutions that preserve the citizen's right and alone monopolise the instruments of organised force in a single national army that works as an institution above individuals. That is why we reject any settlement that recycles the "Qaht" elite, which tried its luck and brought the country to where it is, just as we reject external deals being a window for the return of the Islamists to the scene, or a platform for narrow pan-Arab projects that see Sudan only as a follower. Sudan is bigger than all these projects: a country diverse in its languages, cultures and regions, and Abyei itself is witness that the fate of its north and south is intertwined and is not written in isolation from one another. The unity of this diversity in a just state of institutions is the only guarantee.
That is why Geneva's test begins after its sessions end. If the mediators come out with one clear position: protecting civilians first, aid access without conditions, and a political track with broad Sudanese ownership that reflects the diversity of the Sudanese and their experiences, as the UN envoy himself said, the meeting was the beginning of a road. But if each party settles for its own paper, peace will continue to be woven far away, while Sudan, with its people, their blood and their hunger, remains on the margins. And Sudan does not deserve the margins; it deserves to be the whole text.
— Adil Mansour
