Sudan talks focus on opening three humanitarian corridors to feed millions, US envoy says

Sudanese army being consulted by phone after refusing to attend talks in Geneva

A Sudanese child being vaccinated against polio in Gedaref state in eastern Sudan on August 19, 2024. AFP

Talks to bring an end to the fighting in Sudan are focusing on proposals to open three humanitarian corridors to deliver food and medicine as 20 million people are cut off from aid, US special envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello said on Monday.

Action must be swiftly taken as a child dies every two hours in the famine-stricken Zamzam displacement camp in the west of the country, which has been at war since April last year, he said.

“Our first priority is to look at how to open three roads that collectively would ensure that 20 million people who are currently cut off completely or largely from food and medicine would be able to get that relief,” the envoy told a news conference in Geneva, where the negotiations are being held.

He said about 100 lorries loaded with humanitarian assistance could travel from Chad to Zamzam camp in northern Darfur as early as Tuesday.

The Zamzam camp, home to about 500,000 people, was declared famine stricken by a UN-backed report this month. It sits close to El Fasher, a north Darfur city the Sudanese Armed Forces and their rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, have been fighting to control for months.

The fighting over El Fasher has displaced tens of thousands who found refuge in the Zamzam camp, whose creation dates to the civil war in Darfur in the 2000s.

More than a year into the war between the army and the RSF, he added, as many as two million Sudanese were starving and another 20 million suffered a shortage of food.

He said efforts were being made to persuade the army and the RSF to allow aid agencies to safely operate in three corridors to deliver food and medicine to Sudan's hardest stricken areas in Darfur, Kordofan in south-west Sudan as well as Sennar and Blue Nile to the south of the capital, Khartoum.

US envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello speaking during a news briefing on August 12. AFP

Last week, the military said it will open one of the three corridors – the Adre border crossing between northern Darfur and Chad – for three months.

Mr Perriello is in Geneva for talks on Sudan that have since last week brought together delegates from the UN, the African Union, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Switzerland.

The talks were initially called to broker a ceasefire, but the army boycotted the process, forcing participants, including the RSF, to shift their focus to finding ways to deal with Sudan's humanitarian crisis.

Sudanese refugee children during a summer school class at the Ngueredomo Primary School in Birao, Central Africa, on August 12, 2024. AFP

Army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan has maintained he would not negotiate with the RSF before the paramilitary pulled out its fighters from private homes and state facilities they have occupied as provided for under an agreement on the protection of civilians brokered by the US and Saudi Arabia in May 2023.

Nevertheless, mediators are in touch with the army.

“The RSF delegation remains here, and we have met with them, and we have worked by phone with the army to accelerate progress that saves lives for the Sudanese people,” Mr Perriello told reporters.

Sudan's ruling, military-led sovereign council said on Sunday that, following a conversation with Mr Perriello, it was sending a delegation to Egypt to discuss the army's participation in the Geneva talks. It said its delegation, which will include two senior military officers, will meet in Cairo with a team of US and Saudi officials.

The US envoy, however, said on Monday that participants were in regular contact with representatives of the Sudanese military but added that their physical presence in Geneva would have produced more results.

Acknowledging that the military's boycott made working towards a cessation of hostilities “difficult,” he said: “We could have done more for the Sudanese people if the army had a delegation here.”

The war in Sudan began when weeks of tension between the army and the RSF over their role in a hoped-for Sudan turned into violence. The fighting has displaced about 10 million Sudanese, of whom more than two million fled to neighbouring countries.

Both sides claim to be fighting the other to bring freedom and democracy to Sudan. Both, however, are accused of committing war crimes in the war.