Thank you.
I'd be happy to talk about that.
Certainly. I'd be very happy to share this, and I really thank the committee for focusing on Sudan.
I can speak very specifically to some of the work that has been going on over the last month or month and a half, as well as the work that many have done over the last 20, 30 or 40 years, unfortunately.
I'll share what I can. I want to be respectful, of course, of the safety of the women who've been involved in the mediation effort, as it's an extremely dangerous thing to be involved in. I also don't want to betray their confidences and jeopardize their access to future rounds of talks, but there's certainly much we can say.
I can give a snapshot of the talks that happened in Switzerland, and please cut me off if this is too much context. Very briefly, the U.S. mediation effort gathered people in Sudan. The co-hosts were Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. Observers included the U.A.E., Egypt, the African Union and the UN. The goal was to bring together the two parties, the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and agree on three narrow issues: a ceasefire, increased humanitarian access and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for an agreement that was reached.
The SAF did not come to the talks. The mediators kept the invitation open and stayed in virtual contact with them. They said it was contact diplomacy, and there were various other ways to be in touch. Those who stayed in Switzerland ended up focusing primarily on humanitarian issues.
The U.S. mediator wanted to ensure that Sudanese women, particularly civilian women, were able to influence the process, so my loose counterpart in the U.S., the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues at the state department, convened a group of about 15 Sudanese women, including several young women from diverse locations like those representing Darfur, who came to Geneva—not to the exact site of the talks—for multiple weeks, and they had a number of contacts meeting directly with the special envoy and his team, as well as with the broader group.
The talks unfortunately didn't reach the goal that they intended—specifically, a ceasefire—but there were some specific outcomes that resulted, including the opening of two humanitarian access points to get desperately needed aid into various areas. The women who came together identified shared priorities based around those three narrow talks, and everyone was very specific that this ceasefire negotiation was not meant to replace a broader political and inclusive civilian-led process that has to address the root causes of the issue. It can't just replicate the same power dynamics that led to this conflict in the first place. They provided a lot of very specific points.
If I have time, in one minute I can share a couple of them. Briefly, they influenced the dynamics and the content of the talks themselves—this has been substantiated publicly by the mediator, and Secretary Blinken of the U.S. made the same comments—and they did so in a couple of ways.
They spoke very frankly about the immense trauma and horrors of the horrific situation that they're dealing with. They talked about sexual violence. They talked about people they know, because everyone knows someone who has been raped by either the RSF or the SAF, and they really brought a sense of urgency to the talks.
They talked about the cessation of hostilities, wanting to ensure that sexual violence would be included in any ceasefire agreement as a violation and explicitly named. They talked about the issue of the two armed groups at different checkpoints demanding sex in exchange for passage, access or food, and that being a crisis and a situation that commanders needed to address.
They asked whether, if humanitarian passages are opened, the corpses of people could be returned through those humanitarian access passageways, because there's so much trauma in communities among people who don't know whether their loved ones are dead or aren't able to give them proper burials. They wanted to include that in talks.
They tried to ensure that humanitarian assistance, which Canada often supports, includes dignity kits for women with sanitary products and access to various medical services and supplies that they need.
They also talked about future talks and future negotiations. They were very clear that they want to ensure women are directly included, and they got that assurance from all of the groups that were there in the final declaration from all of the actors.
Thank you for your question.
