Sudan Women Leaders Question El Burhan's Dialogue Plan

Sudanese women’s leaders and activists are questioning whether army chief and Sovereignty Council chair Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan’s proposed dialogue can deliver a meaningful political breakthrough without a ceasefire, independent guarantees, and genuine participation by women. The 19-member Sudan Dialogue Preparation Committee says it is launching a national, independent effort to create the conditions for talks between political, civil, and community forces. It says its role is limited to facilitating initial consultations on the conditions, methodology, participation and representation criteria, guarantees, and agenda, without imposing a predetermined path. At a press conference in Khartoum on Sunday, the committee called for written, verifiable guarantees for participants, an end to cases linked to political views against those travelling from abroad to join the dialogue, temporary procedural immunity, and an environment that allows public freedoms. It says the state’s role should be limited to providing guarantees, facilities, and protection, without interfering in the selection of participants, the agenda, or the outcomes. But women’s activist Rabha Ismail tells Radio Dabanga that while ending Sudan’s war will ultimately require dialogue, its success depends on the warring parties agreeing to its terms and mechanisms. She questions who will select the dialogue committee, and how its independence can be guaranteed when the Port Sudan government itself is a party to the conflict. The process also needs mediation and a political environment created through a truce and ceasefire as signs of good faith, she says. With the war continuing and spreading, any dialogue held amid fighting risks becoming, in her words, “a one-sided dialogue”. Ismail says the political process must address the roots and causes of the war rather than settle for a temporary deal. Ignoring the structure of the state and sources of violence, she warns, could produce a fragile peace that plunges the country back into war or coups. She also fears that the continued influence of Islamists within the Port Sudan authorities could give them renewed legitimacy through the dialogue. Women need “peace from a feminist perspective”, she says, with meaningful participation that delivers justice, dignity, and equality, dismantles structures of violence, reforms and reorganises military institutions, tackles hate speech, and rebuilds trust between communities. On amnesties and immunities, Ismail distinguishes between protection from prosecution over political positions and exemption from accountability for abuses. People who have committed crimes and violations, she says, should not benefit from political arrangements that shield them from accountability. Who guarantees the guarantees? Dar Alsalam Abdullah Wada’a, head of the Sudan Civil Movement and an advocate for the political and social participation of rural women, tells Radio Dabanga that dialogue is, in principle, necessary. But the central questions are who is calling for it, and who determines its participants, conditions, and guarantees. Burhan, as commander of the army and a principal party to the war, cannot be treated as a neutral actor or as the sole representative of the state in the political process, she says. Wada’a’s questions how armed movements and groups fighting alongside the army will participate, and whether they will enter the dialogue as independent parties or as forces aligned with the army. The status of every participant must be clear from the outset. She calls for clear participation criteria covering armed groups and Islamist organisations that have taken part in the fighting. Taking up arms and participating in the war, she says, should not automatically become a route to political legitimacy. Anyone proven to have been involved in crimes or abuses against civilians must be held accountable, she says. On the guarantees promised by El Burhan, Wada’a asks: “Who guarantees these guarantee