THREAT rather than condemnation should be applied to the warring parties in Sudan by those seeking peace, a South Sudanese Bishop has said.
Speaking at a Religion Media Centre (RMC) briefing to mark the third anniversary of the civil war, which has produced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the Bishop of Wangeli, Dr Zechariah Manyok Biar, said: “The Church is talking about peace. But we know the psychology of the Sudanese. When one side is winning, that side will not be willing to talk. And if they are losing then they will be willing to talk in order to gain time to reorganise. . .
“The pressure that they will accept is the heavy one. So if you want to put pressure on them, it would be at the level of threat, not just condemnation, because ethical reasons do not convince them.”
The briefing was held on Wednesday, on the eve of third International Sudan Conference, convened in Berlin to call for an end to hostilities and secure commitments to humanitarian funding.
A statement published by the organisers — the UK, Germany, France, the United States, the African Union, and the European Union — described civilians as “the primary victims of this war”. It condemned “the abhorrent violence” perpetrated against them, “including attacks on ethnic grounds, attacks on humanitarian personnel, as well as bombardment of civilian and humanitarian infrastructure and sexual and gender-based violence, and all violations of international humanitarian law”.
To date, more than 13 million people have been forcibly displaced by the conflict. Famine has been confirmed in multiple places and almost 30 million people require food assistance. The conference secured commitments totalling £1.3 billion. The British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced a doubling of UK aid for frontline assistance and Sudanese aid groups to support the hardest-to-reach areas in Sudan. In total, the UK has pledged £146 million in humanitarian funding for Sudan this year.
Both politicians and aid groups have highlighted the limitations of aid.
“The honest truth is, if we could achieve a ceasefire in Sudan, that would have more impact than any humanitarian aid funding we can provide because, frankly, the humanitarian funding too often cannot get in because of the conflict,” Ms Cooper told MPs last month.
Addressing the RMC briefing last week, the Labour MP Anneliese Dodds, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan and South Sudan, said: “We have seen the belligerents really forum-shopping over the years of the war. We haven’t seen consistent engagement — they’ve tried to play off different processes against each other. They have also arguably try to play off different humanitarian agencies.”
She called for “strong pressure on the belligerents”, with the aim of forcing them to accept that the war is a war on civilians. “Currently, both of them believe they can win and achieve at least some of their outcomes,” she said. “And for as long as they believe that, it appears, unfortunately, without more pressure they will continue their hostilities with civilians playing the price.”
The UK government, the UN security council’s lead on Sudan, has been accused by aid agencies of making inadequate efforts to secure peace (News, 16 January).
Patrick Watt, CEO of Christian Aid, told the RMC that diplomatic pressure was “not just a matter for the two warring parties”. He said: “It’s about all the people supplying them with weapons and funding them which includes the UAE, Iran, Saudi Arabia.”
He also said that there had been “a hesitancy on the part of some of the allies of the different parties to the conflict to apply pressure and I don’t think, for example, the UK government has done everything it could to apply pressure, for example, to the UAE on its relationship with the RSF”.
The General Secretary of the Anglican Communion, the Rt Revd Anthony Poggo, said that the message from Sudan was: “Send us help, send us support. Don’t send us bullets, don’t send us guns.”