Does Veto Absence Signal Truce Presence?

After more than 40 months of war since April 2023, with its devastating toll in death, displacement, destruction and the erosion of the foundations of both society and the state, the most pressing question may no longer be whether the international community has recognised Sudan's tragedy. The tragedy is already well known. The more important question is this: Are international and regional interests beginning to converge sufficiently to turn concern about the war into practical will to stop it?

The answer still requires considerable caution. A ceasefire is neither imminent nor assured. Differences remain within the UN Security Council and among regional powers, while the belligerents themselves have yet to demonstrate a clear and sustained determination to end the fighting. Yet several recent developments suggest that the environment surrounding the war may be beginning to shift. Three developments deserve particular attention: what has happened at the Security Council; the increasing convergence between the efforts of the Quad and the Quintet; and the growing risk that the costs of Sudan's war will spill further across the region.

Security Council Consensus Is Not Agreement on a Comprehensive Arms Embargo — But Something Has Changed

It is important first to establish precisely what happened at the Security Council. Resolution 2828, adopted unanimously on 11 September 2026, did not impose a comprehensive arms embargo on the whole of Sudan. It renewed for one month, until 9 October, the existing sanctions measures under the Resolution 1591 regime, which include the arms embargo applying to Darfur. (United Nations)

The significance of this detail should nevertheless not be underestimated.On the surface, the resolution did not fundamentally alter the existing sanctions regime. Politically, however, it kept the issue open. Rather than simply rolling over the sanctions regime for another year, the Council adopted a short extension while discussions continued. In other words, Council members had not reached agreement on the future scope of the regime, but they unanimously agreed to give diplomacy additional time. This does not constitute a breakthrough.But it may represent a movement from stalemate towards negotiation.

The Security Council has effectively given diplomacy another month. The question is: Will that month be invested in peace—or absorbed by the political economy of war? The one-month consensus should therefore not be mistaken for complete international agreement over how to address Sudan's war. Rather, it indicates that Sudan has returned to a space of active negotiation within the Council.

The critical question is not merely whether sanctions or the arms embargo will ultimately be expanded. It is whether Council members can translate the minimum consensus that allowed Resolution 2828 to pass into a broader minimum consensus around reducing arms flows, protecting civilians, and increasing pressure for a humanitarian truce and ceasefire. An arms embargo, whatever its geographical scope, is not an end in itself. Its real value lies in whether it forms part of a wider political and security strategy that reduces the parties' capacity to continue the war and increases the cost of rejecting peace. (United Nations)

From Multiple Initiatives to Converging Tracks

The second development concerns the Quad and the Quintet. For years, Sudan's problem has not been the absence of peace initiatives. If anything, it has suffered from their proliferation: multiple centres of mediation, different priorities and insufficient coordination. At times, Sudan has appeared to have more mediators than a single coherent peace process. There are now indications of an effort to connect these tracks more effectively.

The Quintet, comprising the African Union, IGAD, the League of Arab States, the European Union and the United Nations, undertook a Good Offices mission to Khartoum from 8 to 10 September. It met senior state officials as well as political and civilian actors. The Quintet has also explicitly stated that it remains in close coordination with the Quad, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, to advance a coherent and viable path towards peace. (European External Action Service)

This should not be interpreted as evidence that peace is close. It should instead be seen as an opportunity to move from competing mediation efforts towards greater complementarity between them. If the political leverage of the influential states within the Quad can be connected with the regional and international institutional legitimacy represented by the Quintet, and reinforced by Security Council pressure, a more coherent coalition may begin to form around a limited and achievable objective: a monitored humanitarian truce leading towards a broader ceasefire.

This convergence acquired additional significance on 14 September, when Security Council members held an informal interactive dialogue organised by Denmark and the United Kingdom under the revealing title: “From Principles to Practice: Translating International Mediation Commitments into a Coherent, Civilian-Led Path to Peace.” The meeting brought together representatives of the UN, African Union, IGAD, League of Arab States and European Union, the institutions comprising the Quintet, to consider how existing mediation efforts might be better connected. (Security Council Report). What is particularly important is that this was not presented as yet another peace initiative. It was an attempt to improve coherence among initiatives already under way. That distinction matters.

It accords with an argument I have repeatedly advanced in Decoding Sudan's War: Sudan does not primarily suffer from a shortage of initiatives. It suffers from fragmented tracks, insufficient coordination, and a persistent gap between diplomatic initiatives and implementation. Indeed, the EU Special Representative for the Horn of Africa, Annette Weber, told the 14 September dialogue that there was now greater international convergence, that the Quad and Quintet were increasingly working in tandem, and that stronger synergies were needed between the Quintet's political track and the Quad's security track. (European External Action Service)

When War Begins to Export Its Costs

There is a third dimension. The consequences of Sudan's war are no longer confined within Sudan. Instability around Sudan's borders, particularly towards Chad and Ethiopia, raises the risk that the effects of the conflict will spread further into an already fragile regional environment. The greater the cross-border movement of weapons, fighters, refugees, illicit economies and security tensions, the less Sudan's war can be contained as simply a “Sudanese crisis”. Here, regional self-interest may begin to work in favour of peace. States do not necessarily act because they have suddenly become more sympathetic to the victims of war. They may also act when the costs of continued conflict to their own security and interests become greater than the costs of helping to end it. This brings us back to one of the central propositions of Decoding Sudan's War: The objective should not simply be to demand that external actors abandon their interests. It should be to re-engineer those interests so that a stable Sudan becomes more valuable to them than a Sudan at war. As Sudan's war increasingly generates regional instability, a ceasefire can become simultaneously a Sudanese interest and a regional interest.

Are Three Dynamics Beginning to Converge?

The present opportunity may lie in the possible convergence of three developments. The first is what I have described as Sudan's Balance of Weakness: a prolonged war in which neither belligerent has been able to achieve the decisive victory necessary to end the conflict on its own terms. The second is the rising regional and international cost of continued war, creating stronger incentives for external actors to coordinate their efforts. The third is the Political Economy of Time in Wartime. Every additional month of war does not simply preserve the status quo. It produces more casualties and destruction, further entrenches the war economy, and creates additional military, political, economic and social facts that make the eventual reconstruction of the Sudanese state more difficult.

If these three dynamics converge— Balance of Weakness + Rising External Costs + Political Economy of Time —the present diplomatic window could generate more serious pressure for a truce. But that window could also be lost.

A Message to the Dialogue Preparatory Committee: Stop Giving the War More Time

The work of Sudan's Dialogue Preparatory Committee acquires a different significance when viewed against these developments. If the Security Council has allowed itself only a short additional period to negotiate the sanctions regime; if the Quad and Quintet are attempting to bring regional and international tracks closer together; and if the danger of regional spillover is increasing, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify a prolonged Sudanese process of preparing to prepare for dialogue. This is not to diminish the importance of dialogue. Nor is it to question the good intentions, commitment or competence of the Committee's members. Civilian dialogue is indispensable for building peace. Sudanese must eventually reach understandings on the state, the constitution, governance, justice, the civil–military relationship and the foundations of political transition. The problem is one of timing and sequencing.

The immediate war is not being fought between the civilian political forces the Committee seeks to bring together. It is being fought between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. The urgent priority, therefore, is not to secure comprehensive civilian agreement on the interpretation of the war and every major political disagreement before the fighting stops. It is to mobilise whatever civilian, political, regional and international influence is available to help prepare the belligerents to accept a humanitarian truce.

The Committee might usefully ask itself one simple question at the end of every meeting: Has what we did today shortened the road to a ceasefire by one day—or added another day to the life of the war?

The Political Economy of Wartime Delay

Time has acquired its own political economy in this war. The time lost by civilians may be time gained by belligerents. The time politicians need to construct consensus may be used by the war to reposition forces, consolidate networks of interests and create new facts on the ground. Delay, therefore, is not always neutral. Those who benefit from the continuation of war may not need to defeat a dialogue initiative or reject it publicly. It may be enough for the process to become prolonged: consultations about consultations; disputes over participation; debates over agendas; negotiations over guarantees; and then the search for who guarantees the guarantors— while the war continues to operate every day.

In wartime, delay itself can become a resource of war. The responsibility of the Dialogue Preparatory Committee is therefore not merely to produce a good dialogue. It is also to ensure that the time consumed in producing that dialogue does not become an unintended gift to those who benefit from continued fighting. Sudan's time is now a scarce resource, like food, medicine and money. It should be spent only on processes that bring the country closer to stopping the bloodshed. The logical sequence is becoming increasingly clear:

Humanitarian truce to stop the bloodshed → Verifiable and independently monitored ceasefire → Broad civilian dialogue to build the peace → A new social contract → Constructing the Sudanese state.

The distinction is fundamental: The belligerents end the war; civilians build the peace.

From a Diplomatic Window to a Ceasefire Window

It would be unwise to exaggerate the significance of recent international and regional developments. The Security Council's unanimous one-month extension of the sanctions regime is not agreement on a comprehensive arms embargo. Growing coordination between the Quad and Quintet does not yet constitute a unified peace process. And external pressure cannot guarantee that the belligerents will accept a truce. But the opposite mistake would be to dismiss the significance of the present moment. We may be witnessing the beginning of a transition from a period in which international and regional actors disagreed primarily over how to manage Sudan's war towards one in which there is growing recognition that the continuation of the war itself is becoming increasingly difficult to manage.

That is precisely the kind of shift that can open a window for peace. But political windows do not remain open indefinitely. What Sudan needs now is not another initiative to add to the existing collection. It needs the scattered elements of pressure to converge around one clear, limited and implementable objective: An urgent humanitarian truce, backed by clear guarantees and a credible independent monitoring mechanism, leading towards a comprehensive ceasefire.

If international and regional actors are moving, even slowly, towards greater convergence, Sudanese political efforts should not be slower in demanding what should already unite them: Stop the killing of Sudanese first. Politics can wait a little. Political disagreements can find their negotiating table. Documents can be revised. Guarantees can be designed.

Lives cannot be restored.

The question that should govern the coming weeks is therefore not: Has complete international and regional consensus on Sudan finally been achieved? It has not. The more useful question is: Has sufficient convergence emerged to help secure the humanitarian truce for which Sudan has waited so long? The answer may not yet be yes. But perhaps, for the first time in some time, it is no longer inevitably no. That is a window Sudanese and international actors should do everything possible to widen before the war closes it again. If war invests in time, peace must this time get there first.

melshibly@hotmail.com

Nottingham, 21 September 2026.