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00:00 Sudanese political activist and analyst Khulud Kaya is in New York during the UN General
00:06 Assembly to lobby for more international support for the victims of the conflict.
00:10 And earlier I asked her for her take on Pertus' exit.
00:15 I very much hope that it will improve the ability of the United Nations to engage.
00:21 The fact that Volker Pertus lost the confidence of one of the belligerent parties means that
00:25 he wasn't able to execute his duties and therefore hopefully bringing in a new person with a
00:31 clean slate who would be able to engage both parties to push for a ceasefire and a mediated
00:36 solution out of this should be good news.
00:39 Overall, how would you characterize the international response to the battling between the RSF and
00:47 the army in Sudan?
00:54 I think on the whole it's not an exaggeration to say it's been quite poor.
00:57 We have seen the emergency response be routinely underfinanced and underfunded.
01:05 We have seen almost a complete withdrawal of many humanitarian actors and also an inability
01:11 to engage with the dynamics on the ground.
01:14 Currently, it is not humanitarian actors in the traditional sense, INGOs and NGOs, who
01:20 are able to offer humanitarian support.
01:22 It is the emergency response rooms that have been created by civilians to help each other.
01:28 The UN, particularly WFP, the World Food Programme, needs to work with these emergency response
01:32 rooms and other similar structures to make sure that the aid is actually delivered to
01:36 where it needs to be.
01:38 And in your estimation, where does it need to be?
01:41 I think a lot of the conversations that we've had are about the damage being done in Khartoum.
01:46 We've also touched upon a bit of the ethnic elements of the conflict in Darfur.
01:54 What is your understanding of how the conflict is being played out at the moment and where
01:58 you think needs the most support at the moment?
02:05 The whole country, in effect, is going to become a very large humanitarian crisis zone.
02:11 Right now we're seeing much of the fighting concentrated in Khartoum and across the five
02:15 states of Darfur.
02:17 There have been serious access issues for humanitarian organisations to be able to
02:21 get into these places, particularly Khartoum, which geographically lies right in the middle
02:25 of Sudan and therefore away from a border, which may help to get aid in.
02:29 To be able to get aid delivered in Khartoum, these organisations have to work with local
02:35 structures to be able to do that.
02:37 But effectively what we're seeing is an ethnicisation of this conflict by both belligerent groups,
02:41 the ISAF and the RSF, which means that we may see civilians pick up arms and this really
02:46 turning into a civil war rather than a conflict between two parts of the military infrastructure
02:53 in Sudan.
02:54 Once that happens, getting a ceasefire in place is going to become infinitely harder
02:58 and getting access to these humanitarian zones will also be infinitely harder.
03:03 So we're also here to press for a full nationwide embargo, extending the one that already exists
03:08 on Sudan, in Darfur, excuse me, the arms embargo, and to make sure that there is a deterrent
03:14 to some degree, coupled with other measures including sanctions that will enable some
03:19 of these arms that are flooding into the country from all sides to stop flowing in and to really
03:23 stop this from becoming much more of an emergency and a disaster than it already is.
03:28 As you said earlier, this is becoming very quickly a forgotten conflict, but we may see
03:33 it become infinitely more difficult and infinitely more challenging as the weeks and months progress.
03:38 Do you have much faith that there may be some chance of securing a negotiated resolution
03:46 to the conflict?
03:51 So if you look at Sudan's history, there's been, first of all, a very long history of
03:55 these kinds of conflicts between the central army and other groups, whether they're paramilitary
04:00 groups or rebel groups.
04:01 And in every instance there has been before, and there have been many, there has never
04:04 been a conflict that has been resolved through a military victory.
04:08 All have been resolved through a mediated settlement.
04:11 And this conflict is unlikely to be very different from that.
04:14 And so if we know that's roughly the historical trajectory of this conflict, effectively we're
04:17 wasting time by allowing both either side to entertain a military victory when we know
04:22 very well that there's very unlikely to be one.
04:25 What this means is that the international community, rather than waiting for one side
04:28 to get leverage or some kind of military advantage over the other, they should be seizing the
04:32 opportunity to press upon both parties that they must put their weapons down and put leverage
04:37 on the table, not just asks, not just demands, but real leverage, financial and otherwise,
04:42 on the table to pressure them to go towards a mediated settlement as soon as possible.
04:48 Because what we're seeing is that the impact on civilians is frankly apocalyptic.
04:53 We're hearing large numbers of people, particularly women and children, facing malnutrition, facing
04:59 famine, facing all sorts of human rights abuses and otherwise.
05:03 What we also would like to see is a protection of civilians force.
05:05 That is already part of the UNITAM's mandate and therefore there's a ground that was already
05:10 laid for increased attention to this file.
05:12 But we're not seeing any movement on that at all.