Geneva’s sixth Sudan coordination meeting ends with no decisions as drone strikes kill scores

The Sixth Consultative Meeting on Enhancing Coordination of Peace Initiatives and Efforts in Sudan convened at the Palais des Nations on Wednesday, co-hosted by the Swiss Confederation and the office of the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy, and co-chaired by Alexandre Fasel, Switzerland’s State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and Pekka Haavisto, the Personal Envoy. dpa and Keystone-SDA put attendance at 27 delegations and roughly 80 representatives; Sudan Tribune counted “more than 20 countries and international bodies” and UN News “nearly two dozen.” Per dpa the United States, China, Germany, Egypt, Turkey and the UAE were in the room. Neither the Port Sudan government nor the Rapid Support Forces attended — the mechanism exists for mediators to coordinate, not for belligerents to negotiate. dpa reported the meeting ended without a breakthrough and with no new initiatives or decisions announced.

“This war must end,” Haavisto told the opening session, according to wire text carried by Africanews, adding that the purpose must be “an unwavering commitment to ending the war, alleviating the suffering of the Sudanese people, and upholding the right to a future of peace, security and dignity in a united Sudan.” Closing, per dpa, he described the aim as finding “practical ways forward” and laying “foundations for sustained cooperation,” and noted that delegates had discussed the war’s environmental destruction for the first time. dpa reports the stated goal is to facilitate confidence-building measures between the parties, “such as the exchange of prisoners of war.” Sudan Tribune reports that members of the Quad and the Quintet met separately on the margins; no outlet we found has the content of that side meeting.

Assessment: The margins were the meeting. A Quad–Quintet huddle among the states that actually supply, bank and fly for the two armies is worth more than 27 delegations in plenary, and it is the one element nobody published. Read the plenary as a holding pattern: when the agenda advances from ceasefire to prisoner swaps to environmental damage, the mediators are managing their own fragmentation, not the war. Haavisto named that problem himself in June — “everybody wants to coordinate and nobody wants to be coordinated,” with belligerents free to go forum shopping. One housekeeping flag: Geneva Solutions says Haavisto succeeded Ramtane Lamamra, yet Sudan Tribune’s 12 October Addis Ababa report lists Lamamra as UN personal envoy. One of those is wrong, and we do not yet know which.