Sudan Mediation: New York push to align international positions
Fouad Hikmat,
Conflict resolution expert, former advisor to EU Horn of Africa envoy
Diplomatic activity on Sudan is intensifying on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, amid reports of a meeting bringing together members of the Quad and Quintet mechanisms, alongside other countries invited by the United States, including Norway, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Qatar.
The meeting, scheduled for 24 September, comes at an important moment. Washington is seeking to revive efforts toward a humanitarian truce between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), while at the same time strengthening international coordination in support of the broader mediation architecture. On 19 September, senior U.S. adviser Massad Boulos confirmed that Washington was once again working with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — the other members of the Quad — as well as Qatar, Türkiye and European partners, to open a new path toward a humanitarian truce.
The forthcoming New York discussions should therefore be viewed as more than another coordination meeting. They represent an attempt to bring the positions of the main external actors closer together, reconnect the Quad track concerned with the humanitarian truce and ceasefire with the Quintet’s political track, and establish a more coherent international framework for addressing the Sudan crisis.
The Quad and Quintet: Toward convergence of the two tracks
The distinction between the two tracks remains important. The Quad has focused primarily on securing a humanitarian truce and a permanent ceasefire, followed by a transitional phase. The Quintet, by contrast, has concentrated more directly on consultations intended to prepare the ground for an inclusive Sudanese political process.
There are now clear attempts to connect the two tracks. Ahead of the Quintet mission to Khartoum from 8 to 10 September, the mechanism explicitly stated that it continued to coordinate closely with the Quad and other international partners in an effort to develop a coherent political pathway. The European Union, for its part, described the two mechanisms as increasingly working “side by side,” suggesting the beginnings of a more integrated peace architecture.
The New York meeting may therefore represent a further step toward institutionalising this convergence. A communiqué affirming a unified approach would carry important political significance, particularly after months in which competing initiatives, diverging regional interests and disagreements over sequencing have weakened the international community’s ability to exert influence.
The meeting could also help restore momentum to the Quad, whose earlier proposals — particularly those relating to a humanitarian truce — encountered significant difficulties with both parties to the war. SAF’s objections centred mainly on withdrawal provisions and the sequencing of implementation, insisting that RSF withdrawal from the cities it occupies should precede, or take place simultaneously with, any truce, under conditions substantially different from those proposed. The RSF, for its part, expressed support for a humanitarian truce while objecting to certain elements of the proposed withdrawal arrangements.
The Challenge of parties’ acceptance
Greater international unity is necessary, but it is not sufficient.
The central risk remains the construction of a top-down settlement framework, under which external actors first reach agreement among themselves and then present the resulting formula to the Sudanese parties for acceptance.
The experience of the war suggests that such an approach has limited prospects of success. Neither SAF nor the RSF can be treated merely as recipients of a formula negotiated internationally. Whatever the international community’s assessment of the two belligerents, they remain the principal military parties whose decisions determine whether a humanitarian truce or ceasefire can actually be implemented. Without effective leverage, a purely top-down approach simply does not work.
International convergence must therefore be accompanied by structured and sustained consultations with both parties before the core parameters of any agreement are finalised.
This does not mean granting either belligerent a veto over Sudan’s political future. Rather, it means distinguishing between two separate questions: first, the military agreement required to stop the fighting, which necessarily requires the participation and consent of the armed parties; and second, the political settlement that will determine how Sudan is governed in the future, which requires far broader Sudanese participation in its design and leadership and must not be monopolised by those who bear arms.
Consultation with political and civilian forces is therefore essential, but it cannot substitute for engagement with the main parties to the conflict when negotiating a truce, ceasefire, withdrawals, humanitarian access, monitoring arrangements or security guarantees.
The Internal dimension
The task is further complicated by continuing divisions inside Sudan.
Political fragmentation is no longer confined to differences between the major blocs; it is also widening within them. Competing approaches to dialogue, disagreements over participation and exclusion, debates over relations with SAF and the RSF, and fundamentally different visions of the future state continue to obstruct the emergence of a sufficiently broad Sudanese political centre.
The Quintet has sought to address this through consultations with Sudanese political actors. Its declared objective is to launch an inclusive process capable of building trust, legitimacy — most importantly — and a common understanding around a political pathway that is Sudanese-owned and Sudanese-led. Yet international facilitation cannot manufacture Sudanese consensus or impose legitimacy from outside while the political actors themselves remain deeply divided. It is also clear that engaging with only one side of the political spectrum will not generate sufficient consensus, particularly when the methodology of the side perceived as dominant within that spectrum is itself subject to considerable controversy.
This places the mediation effort before a three-level challenge.
First, the external actors need a sufficient degree of convergence among themselves. Second, the two principal military parties must be engaged to the extent necessary to negotiate and implement a cessation of hostilities. Third, Sudanese political and societal forces must build sufficient common ground to provide legitimacy and direction to the political settlement that follows.
Failure at any one of these levels could undermine progress at the others.
The New York meeting, due to take place in the coming days, should therefore be regarded as a potentially important development, particularly if it succeeds in bridging differences between the Quad and Quintet and establishing a clearer division of roles between the humanitarian, security and political tracks. However, sharp divisions among members of the two mechanisms and intensifying competition between them, against the background of emerging regional strategic challenges, may limit the prospects of success.
The most useful outcome of the meeting would not be another detailed roadmap drafted outside Sudan, but agreement on a common mediation framework based on shared principles, coordinated messaging, an agreed sequencing between the humanitarian truce and political process, and a mechanism for regular consultation with Sudanese stakeholders.
The fundamental problem is no longer the absence of international initiatives. Sudan has witnessed numerous initiatives, declarations and mediation formulas. What they have repeatedly lacked is coherence, parties’ acceptance and implementation, while intense competition among external actors has further undermined them.
Consensus nevertheless remains the strongest available foundation for a legitimate settlement process. But consensus should not be confused with complete unanimity. At the international level, what is required is sufficient agreement among the principal external actors to prevent competing mediation tracks. At the military level, sufficient agreement between SAF and the RSF is needed to make a humanitarian truce, and the ceasefire that follows, implementable. At the political level, sufficiently broad Sudanese consensus is required to prevent the final settlement from becoming the project of one political camp against another.
Achieving all three levels simultaneously remains difficult, given the depth of Sudan’s internal divisions and the conflicting interests of external actors.
Nevertheless, the New York discussions offer an opportunity to move from fragmented mediation toward a unified and coordinated framework. Their success should ultimately be measured not by the strength of the language in the final communiqué, but by the extent to which international convergence is translated into serious consultation with the principal Sudanese actors and into a credible process that is Sudanese-owned and Sudanese-led.
Without such a bridge between external consensus and internal acceptance, any further internationally agreed framework, revived roadmap or new joint statement risks joining the long list of initiatives that achieved diplomatic agreement outside Sudan but found little prospect of implementation within it.
Fouad Hikmat