The UN’s envoy for Sudan, Pekka Haavisto, on Wednesday called for a humanitarian ceasefire in the country, where a civil war has been underway for almost three years.
Speaking ahead of the third international conference on Sudan in Berlin, Haavisto said a halt to the fighting would allow relief agencies to “get the aid to people, ordinary people in Sudan.”
Haavisto, who was appointed as UN Secretary General António Guterres’s Personal Envoy for Sudan earlier this year added that a ceasefire would also stop the use of “very disturbing weapons, like drones.”
He said the conference in Berlin was “an essential meeting for the international community that wants to help – but also wants to stop this war.”
The civil war in Africa’s third-largest country began in April 2023.
Since then, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) of de-facto ruler Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Mohamed Hamdan Daglo have been fighting bitterly for supremacy in the country.
Haavisto said he met al-Burhan in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and his rival Daglo in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
Neither of the leaders is attending the Berlin conference, at which politicians from Europe and Africa, as well as representatives of civil society groups, are making a fresh attempt to find a peaceful solution to the bloody conflict.
It is also intended to ensure that what the UN describes as the world’s current largest humanitarian crisis does not fade from public view, given the wars in Iran and Ukraine.
