Berlin Conference yield more rhetoric than results
Elwathig Kameir
kameir@yahoo.com
For the third time since the outbreak of war in Sudan, a European capital is hosting, on April 15, an international conference dedicated to the Sudanese crisis—coming after Paris and then London, in April 2024 and 2025 respectively. Despite the change of venue and some procedural adjustments, the overall framework remains largely the same: a ministerial political track, a humanitarian track aimed at mobilizing support, and a third track involving a range of Sudanese political and civil actors.
This is why the real question this time is not about good intentions, nor about the strength of the language that may appear in the final communiqués, but rather about added value: what can the Berlin Conference possibly add, after two years of conferences, appeals, and pledges, to a reality that has seen no qualitative change in either the humanitarian or political track?
On the surface, the Berlin Conference appears to be a direct continuation of the same approach that shaped the Paris and London meetings. The most notable difference this time is the more prominent role of the “Quintet Committee,” which includes the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, IGAD, and the League of Arab States. This Committee did not emerge out of nowhere; rather, it evolved from the broader mechanism on the Sudan crisis that grew out of the African Union’s extraordinary ministerial efforts in June 2024, before later crystallizing into a more clearly defined five-party format.
Over the past period, this mechanism has undertaken a series of consultations and contacts with Sudanese political and civil actors. Some of these took place in direct meetings in Addis Ababa and Cairo, while others were conducted virtually and through preliminary contacts. Yet what is striking is that these efforts, despite their breadth, failed to build even a modest degree of consensus. Indeed, at earlier stages, the parties themselves were unwilling to even sit together at the same table. Therefore, highlighting the role of the Quintet in the Berlin Conference is not, in itself, enough to suggest that we are witnessing a genuine development in approach; it may simply be a repackaging of the same tools in a new format.
Herein lies one of the first problems with the Berlin Conference: the absence of evaluation. Few stop to seriously assess the outcome of the previous two conferences, or to ask the simple question: what did they actually achieve? Did they produce a breakthrough in humanitarian assistance? Did they narrow the distance between Sudan’s competing political forces? Did they help advance a ceasefire, or generate a credible mechanism to impose or monitor one? Or did they, at best, yield only limited results, while the same rhetoric continued to be repeated about the enormity of the humanitarian catastrophe and the urgency of action, without translating into any tangible shift on the ground.
If the previous two editions failed to produce meaningful results, then it is entirely reasonable to ask, before the third convenes: what is new here? And where is the added value?
To be sure, there are those who continue to defend the importance of such a conference from a humanitarian standpoint. They argue that any international effort that can help mobilize resources, improve humanitarian access, or keep Sudan on the international agenda is not something to be dismissed. This is an argument with moral and political weight, particularly given the widening humanitarian suffering, the deteriorating conditions of civilians, and the ongoing displacement and near collapse of basic services.
However, acknowledging the legitimacy of this humanitarian dimension should not lead to an exaggeration of what the conference can realistically achieve. There is a clear difference between a platform designed for mobilization, support, and advocacy, and one expected to advance a complex political process in a country where political and social polarization have reached a profound and deeply entrenched level.
For this reason, the core reservation about the Berlin Conference is not rooted in a rejection of international efforts in principle, but in conflating two distinct levels: humanitarian support and general political pressure, on the one hand, and Sudan’s broader political process, on the other. In its third edition, the conference does not limit itself to the ministerial and humanitarian tracks; it also includes a political-civilian track. Yet this political dimension is not entirely new. The previous two conferences also carried similar political ambitions, without either producing even a minimal level of consensus or a joint statement of real political value.
What is new this time is not the existence of a political track as such, but rather the extent of the Quintet’s direct involvement in preparing and organizing it, shaping its agenda, and presenting participants with a pre-drafted document or collective appeal.
This point is not merely a procedural detail; it carries clear political significance. The existence of a pre-prepared document, or a call circulated in advance to participating actors, suggests that what is sought, at a minimum, is the extraction of a political outcome that gives the conference a marketable result—allowing the organizers and sponsors to say that they did not merely mobilize humanitarian support, but also pushed the political track one step forward.
In that sense, the goal seems to be the production of a kind of “symbolic political effect”: a symbolic, diplomatic, and media gain that presents the conference as a platform that succeeded in bringing Sudanese civilian actors together around a common formulation—or at least around a shared appeal—even if the practical impact of such an outcome remains limited in the face of the crisis’s actual complexity.
This cannot be separated from the broader context of the position of European states and the European Union in the Sudan file. There is a growing impression that European actors feel, to varying degrees, relatively marginalized in this file, especially as the United States has come to dominate more influential tracks, particularly through the Quartet mechanism, in a context that has notably weakened the British role in particular. Within this framework, European engagement through the Quintet takes on added significance, especially since the European Union is not only a member of the Quintet, but also its principal financier.
From this angle, the European insistence on using the Berlin platform—just as it previously used Paris and London—can be understood not only as an attempt to mobilize humanitarian support, but also as an effort to assert a political presence in the Sudan file and to register a visible diplomatic role through the Quintet and its outputs, even if the actual effect of such a role remains limited.
More fundamentally, however, this approach appears once again to bypass the heart of the problem rather than move closer to it. Sudan’s dilemma does not lie in the absence of yet another statement, or in a shortage of general appeals. It lies in the existence of deep, foundational disagreements among political and civil actors over pivotal issues that cannot simply be glossed over with broad, vague language.
There is clear divergence in positions regarding the Rapid Support Forces, the Army, the military leadership, Islamists, and the role of regional and international actors. These are not marginal disagreements; they are the principal obstacles hindering the emergence of even a minimal degree of common understanding. In many cases, the divergence extends to how the war itself is defined, how its parties are characterized, and what kind of solution is seen as necessary. Accordingly, betting on reaching a consensus on ways to end the war without first confronting these core disputes openly and honestly is unrealistic. What is striking is that mediators, including the Quintet, often behave as though these differences can be temporarily sidestepped in order to produce a general consensus, whereas experience suggests the opposite: every time the real fault lines are bypassed, failure returns in a new form.
The more useful approach is not to rush toward ready-made consensus documents, but to unpack areas of political contention, place them openly on the table, and work through them patiently and clearly—even if that is slower and less attractive from a diplomatic optics perspective. By contrast, rushing to secure a “collective appeal” or “joint document” amid such profound divergence is closer to managing appearances than to addressing the substance of the crisis.
This dilemma becomes even clearer when one looks at the disagreements surrounding the conference itself. Objections to the Berlin Conference have not come from a single political camp or a cohesive bloc; they have emerged from actors with very different perspectives, calculations, and positions on the war. That in itself is significant, because it suggests that reservations about the conference cannot be reduced to narrow political alignment; they also concern the nature of the conference itself, its methodology, and the question of representation within it. One of the most difficult points of contention concerns not simply attendance or boycott, but who gets to participate, in what capacity, and with what degree of representation; who is excluded; and who has the right to claim representation of which constituency. Moreover, forces opposed to the RSF often refuse to sit with those they view as close to the government or to Islamists, while those parties in turn refuse to sit with those they see as belonging to the opposing camp or serving as its political cover. Under such conditions of sharp polarization, merely bringing these actors into one room is, at best, a limited procedural achievement—not a natural prelude to political consensus.
This conclusion is reinforced by the experience of the Cairo Conference of Sudanese political and civil actors, held on July 6, 2024. That meeting was, in principle, more directly connected to the Sudanese context and better positioned to open an initial breach in the wall of division, especially since a broad spectrum of actors accepted the Egyptian government’s invitation. Yet even that conference failed to produce a joint statement. If that happened in a less polarized environment than the one that exists today, where does the assumption come from that the Berlin meeting—amid sharper polarization and a more complicated political environment—can achieve what neither Cairo nor other platforms could?
Most likely, expectations here are exceeding reality, and the wager on an externally assembled gathering being able to to generate a minimum level of Sudanese consensus remains a premature one.
On the humanitarian level, too, the matter requires a measure of frankness. The problem has never been a shortage of conferences or a lack of forceful language in describing the catastrophe. Rather, it lies in the persistent gap between pledges and needs, in the absence of mechanisms capable of ensuring aid delivery beyond the calculations of the warring parties and in weak follow-up and implementation. This raises a legitimate question: if previous conferences all acknowledged the scale of the catastrophe, why has that declared awareness not translated into a greater impact in funding, humanitarian access, and real pressure on those obstructing relief? Repeating recognition of the tragedy is not enough unless it is accompanied by a real shift in the tools used to address it.
Moreover, the broad objection to the conference does not stem only from concerns over sovereignty or from reservations about the government’s absence from its arrangements—important as that issue is—but also from skepticism regarding the usefulness of externally engineered solutions unless they are rooted internally and rest on a wider Sudanese political will. This is a point on which highly divergent forces, despite their disparate motives and calculations, seem to intersect. Some believe that bypassing state institutions does not help the search for a solution; some reject outright the logic of externally imposed settlements from above; some object to the nature of the invitations and the distribution of representation; while others see the conference as merely reproducing a track that has already proven ineffective.
Across all these positions, the common thread is doubt that the conference can produce a real breakthrough in the absence of the political foundations that give any process genuine meaning. Accordingly, the most important significance of the Berlin Conference does not lie in any new breakthrough it may claim to represent, but in the way it once again exposes the limits of the prevailing international approach toward Sudan. After three years of war, the international community still appears, in important respects, to behave as though the complexity of Sudan’s crisis can be contained by repeating the same platforms, the same language and the same wager on an immature consensus building.
Yet the facts suggest that the war will not come any closer to ending unless the underlying causes of Sudan’s internal divisions are addressed, rather than merely their symptoms. This requires an inclusive Sudanese dialogue that excludes no one except those guilty of crimes and corruption, undertaken through the creation of a conducive political environment and without rushing outcomes. In such a process, the role of mediators should be facilitation and assistance – not the manufacture of unrealistic substitutes.
Conclusion: The Limits of the International Community’s Approach
The Berlin Conference may not be entirely meaningless. But it certainly will produce far less than the expectations attached to it, and certainly far less than the noise surrounding it. It may produce some value by maintaining Sudan’s tragedy within the sphere of international attention, or in renewing pressure for humanitarian assistance and civilian protection. But that is one thing; claiming that it is a gateway to a political breakthrough is quite another.
In the final analysis, the conference cannot compensate for the absence of Sudanese consensus, nor can it bypass the core points of disagreement among Sudan’s political and civil actors, or substitute for a serious dialogue that confronts these differences instead of skirting around them. At most, Berlin reflects the continued international failure to move from managing the crisis to exerting decisive influence over its course. Real peace in Sudan will not be produced by seasonal conferences. It will come from a serious, inclusive, and politically robust Sudanese process—one that finds external actors willing to facilitate and support it, not ones who imagine they can create it on behalf of its rightful owners.