Washington floats a 90-day truce in Geneva while Burhan rules out talking to anyone
Twenty-seven countries called for a humanitarian pause as the IPC warned of growing famine risk and less than half of Sudan’s appeal was funded.
US officials joined representatives of 27 countries at the sixth consultative meeting on Sudan in Geneva during the week of 19 October, with participating states calling for a humanitarian truce. Massad Boulos, senior adviser to President Donald Trump for Arab and African affairs, said there is no military solution to the war and warned that the fighting is fuelling further regional instability, according to The National’s report of 23 October. Boulos has proposed a 90-day humanitarian truce followed by negotiations and a resumption of the transition to civilian rule. A Sudanese official, unnamed in the reporting, criticised the plan as risking a de facto partition of Sudan on the Libyan model. Army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had already ruled out negotiations with the RSF “or any other party” on 6 October, promising the next day to take back “every inch” and to continue the “military option.”
The humanitarian arithmetic moved faster than the diplomacy. The IPC issued a food insecurity and malnutrition alert on 12 October warning of growing famine risk across parts of Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan, driven by an El Niño-induced drought affecting roughly half the country; its Famine Review Committee said there is not enough survey data for a full analysis, so no famine classification has been made. As of 8 October, less than half of Sudan’s humanitarian appeal had been funded. The International Rescue Committee said on 13 October that over 300,000 people had been displaced in Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan “since October,” a phrasing its release does not pin to a year. On Saturday, Sudan’s Emergency Lawyers group proposed urgent relief centres, a day after Britain and other Western states called for an escalated humanitarian response.
Assessment: The only leverage visible on this file is a travel document: reporting attributed to Reuters sources, relayed secondhand, says Washington made Burhan’s UN General Assembly visa conditional on accepting the truce, and The National separately links the withheld visa to his resistance to the proposal. That is a small lever against a commander who believes he is winning. On the hunger side, read the IPC caveat correctly in both directions — the absence of a famine declaration reflects missing survey data, not an improving picture, and parties to the war have an interest in keeping surveyors out. A funded appeal would do more than a sixth consultative meeting.