An emergency conference has been convened regarding the situation in Sudan, where violence between paramilitary groups and the national army has been going on since mid-April by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an East African trading grouping.
South Sudan has confirmed its attendance at the summit, the date of which has not yet been revealed, and the topic of discussion will be the growing crisis, according to local media on Monday.
South Sudan’s Foreign Affairs Minister James Pitia Morgan stated, “The IGAD secretariat is currently finalising the summit agenda and is seeking input from member states,” as reported by the Sudan Tribune news agency.
Morgan continued, “These contributions represent the leaders of IGAD’s visions for bringing peace and stability back to Sudan.”
Following discussions between Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh, IGAD Executive Secretary Workneh Gebeyehu, and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s armed forces, it was decided to convene the meeting on Sunday. The eight-state Horn of Africa IGAD group is led by Guelleh.
The UN estimates that the violence in Sudan has claimed the lives of 9,000 people and forced almost 6.2 million others to flee their homes. The parties reached a consensus on the necessity of an extended truce.
Earlier, the bloc called a meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with the goal of launching a peace process, but the Sudanese administration had rejected to go. William Ruto, the president of the committee facilitating the negotiations, was rejected by General al-Burhan on the grounds that Nairobi has sided with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
But after meeting with Ruto earlier this month, the head of the Sudanese armed forces declared that they had decided to work on an urgent regional summit to discover methods to expedite a peace process that had been started by the US and Saudi Arabia in the early weeks of the conflict.
The international community has been encouraged by IGAD to support its collaborative efforts with the African Union to stop the violence in Sudan, which is currently in its seventh month, and to support “African solutions to African problems.”
The regional government had earlier contemplated deploying soldiers into the war-torn nation in order to safeguard civilians, as multiple appeals for the opposing parties to cease hostilities had proven to be futile.
