African Union delegation ends Sudan field visit as army and RSF gain ground on separate fronts

A delegation from the African Union began a two-day field visit to Sudan on Sunday, seeking to push efforts towards a ceasefire, improve humanitarian access and revive a political process to end a war that Al Jazeera reports has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions over three years. The Peace and Security Council is engaging with Sudanese authorities and, in Al Jazeera’s formulation, “other parties in the conflict” — wording that does not establish whether any Rapid Support Forces representative was met. The visit is verifiable as an event; its outcomes are not. As of filing, the delegation’s composition, whether it met General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and which cities it visited have not been published. Al Jazeera’s own framing of the terrain is that the Sudanese Armed Forces have regained control of much of the capital, Khartoum, while the RSF remain entrenched across much of Darfur.

The humanitarian file the delegation says it came to address rests on figures that pre-date the visit and have not improved. UNICEF, drawing on the 2026 IPC analysis, puts nearly 19.5 million people in acute food insecurity and nearly 135,000 in Catastrophic conditions, IPC Phase 5, across 14 hotspots, with areas of Darfur, South Darfur and South Kordofan flagged at risk of famine in coming months. UNICEF expects an estimated 825,000 children under five to suffer severe acute malnutrition in 2026, a 7% increase on 2025 and 25% above pre-conflict levels. The IPC has been explicit that its alert “does not constitute a formal famine classification” while warning that “these alarming rates suggest an increased risk of excess mortality.” WFP, UNICEF and FAO assess conditions as too volatile to predict outcomes for around 841,000 people in the hardest-hit areas, including El Fasher, Kadugli and Dilling.

Assessment: Judge this mission by whether a text exists tomorrow, and by whether that text names the RSF as a counterparty rather than as “other parties.” Field visits of this kind are cheap for a host government: Port Sudan gains the photograph of engagement without conceding anything on access, and it does so at a moment when its chief of staff is promising outright military victory by December. The number to watch is not 19.5 million but 841,000 — the caseload the assessment system can no longer measure. When the measuring stops, so does the leverage that measurement gives outside mediators.