The United Kingdom has urged Sudan’s warring parties to protect civilians, allow aid to reach people in need and choose diplomacy over continued fighting, while calling for greater pressure on those supplying and financing the conflict.
Ambassador Kate Foster, the UK’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, made the appeal at a Security Council meeting on Sudan on 16 October. Her statement linked the humanitarian crisis to the means sustaining the war, arguing that the Council’s sanctions regime should adapt to the way the conflict is now being fought.
Calls for civilian protection and safe aid access
The UK said civilian protection must be the priority. Foster pointed to recent drone strikes and other aerial attacks, including in the Kordofan region, and warned that civilians were being killed and injured while markets, agricultural production and other essential infrastructure were being destroyed.
The statement also highlighted a humanitarian warning issued that week of an increasing famine risk in Darfur and the Kordofans. Foster said more than 33 million people need humanitarian assistance. That figure describes the scale of need, while the famine warning concerns increasing risk in specified regions; it is not a declaration that famine has been declared throughout Sudan.
Foster urged the parties to comply with international humanitarian law and facilitate safe, unhindered humanitarian access. She also called on them to implement commitments made in Jeddah, including distinguishing civilians from military targets and taking all feasible precautions to protect civilians.
The appeal follows a war in which the civilian population has faced repeated violence and severe disruption to basic services. The UK statement recalled the fall of El Fasher to the Rapid Support Forces a year earlier. Foster referred to findings of an international fact-finding mission documenting systematic starvation, torture, killings, rape and deliberate ethnic targeting. She also referred to reports of civilians killed while fleeing and patients and staff killed in hospitals. These grave descriptions were part of the UK’s account of documented findings and reported events, not a new assessment of every incident in the conflict.
Pressure on external support and sanctions
The UK argued that external support was helping to sustain the conflict. Its statement said drone capabilities were procured, financed, transferred and maintained through networks outside Sudan, without identifying specific suppliers. It called on all states to ensure they were not fuelling the war and said those supplying, financing or enabling it should face greater pressure.
Foster said the Security Council’s Sudan sanctions regime needed to evolve to reflect how the war is being fought today. The UK supports efforts to strengthen the regime, she said, with the stated aim of increasing pressure on those enabling the conflict and supporting civilian protection. This is a call for the Council to develop its approach, not an announcement that new sanctions have already been imposed.
The statement also encouraged swift transmission to the Council and publication of the final report by the Panel of Experts established under the Sudan sanctions framework. That request was part of the UK’s wider argument for stronger scrutiny and pressure around the networks sustaining the fighting.
Ceasefire and political process
On diplomacy, the UK called for the parties to agree to a humanitarian truce, a permanent ceasefire and an inclusive, civilian-led political process. Foster welcomed efforts by the Quad and Quintet, as well as work by the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy on confidence-building measures. She pointed to planned consultations in Geneva the following week, while making clear that no agreement had been announced in the statement.
The UK also said any national dialogue must be genuinely inclusive and Sudanese-led, giving civilians a meaningful voice. Its position was that a durable peace required more than arrangements between armed parties: political participation by Sudanese civilians should be part of a credible process.
The intervention put humanitarian access, sanctions and diplomacy together as connected parts of the Council’s response. It did not set out a new sanctions list or report a ceasefire deal. Instead, it pressed the parties to protect people and allow assistance through, while asking states and the Council to address external support and renew efforts towards a political settlement.
