Sudan Symposium in Nairobi

Nils Wömer, Director of the Regional Programme Security Dialogue for East Africa (RP SIDODI East Africa; left) and the Joseph Bonnet, Deputy National Security Advisor for Kenya (right) opened the Sudan Symposium with their remarks, together with Mustafa Y. Ali, PhD, Chairman and Founder of the HORN Institute.

Academics, diplomats and experts on international and regional security, and politicians, government officials and analysts from Sudan came together to discuss the Role of non-military actors in the con-flict resolution and the post-conflict transformation process in Sudan.

Steffen Krüger Country Director of the KAS Country Office Egypt (left), and Alina Reiss (middle), future Policy Advisor for East Africa from KAS Office Berlin attended the conference to expand their knowledge about the conflict in Sudan. On the right of the picture is Commander Holger Großmann, Defense Attaché at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Along with experts on international and regional security from Sudan, high level politicians, numer-ous international academics and diplomats participated in the panel discussions. Especially the partic-ipation of Sudanese experts strongly enriched the discussion. Among those experts were Eynas Mo-hamed Latef (picture at the top left), Amgad Fareid El-Tayeb (second person from left, top right pic-ture), Ambassador Nureldin Satti (picture at the bottom left, person at the centre right) Osama Tageldin, (picture at the bottom left, person at the far right), Professor Faiz Omar Jamie (picture at the bottom right).

The participants contributed their opinions to the plenary discussion on how to proceed with the situation in Sudan.

Angella Kasekende, Project Manager at the KAS RP SIPODI East Africa, giving her closing remarks.

During the reception following the conference, the participants took the opportunity to discuss the previously discussed topics further in an informal setting.

The symposium themed, "Situating Non-military Players in the Sudan Conflict: Assessing Their Role in the Post-conflict Reconstruction of Sudan" was a follow-up to the conference held in Nairobi in September 2023 under the theme "From Crisis to Resolution; Envisioning Sudan's national, geopolitical, and security pathways for effective intervention”. The four-panel symposium was attended by academics, diplomats and experts on international and regional security, and politicians, government officials and analysts from Sudan.

The symposium was opened by Dr Mustafa Y. Ali, the Chairman of the HORN Institute, Nils Wörmer, Director of the KAS RP SIPODI East Africa, and Joseph Bonnet, Deputy National Security Advisor for Kenya. They highlighted the significance of the discussion and the positioning of the Non-Military players at the centre of the reconstruction of Sudan. Nils Wörmer used the opportunity to welcome and introduce other KAS representatives; Steffen Krüger, Country Director of the KAS Egypt Office, and Alina Reiss, who is soon taking over the portfolio of Policy Advisor for East Africa, Migration & Refugee.

The first panel, consisting of Eynas Mohamed Latef from Teeba Press, Monica Camacho, Humanitarian Representative for Central and East Africa, Médicins sans frontièrs, and Ambassador Haile Menkerios, Former Head of the United Nations Office of the African Union (UNOAU), made an assessment of the conflict, one year later. In addition to the background and dimensions of the conflict, the panellists discussed the humanitarian situation in Sudan, the patterns and extent of displacement, the current military situation, and the general implications of the war on the region.

This was followed by a second panel discussion on the non-military options for the resolution of conflict in Sudan. On the panel was Faiz Omar Jamie, Professor at the Centre for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Bahri, (who travelled all the way from Khartoum to attend the Conference), Amir Suliman, Legal Programme Coordinator African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies, Hiba Abukar, Project Officer at the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network and Shaza Bala Elmahdi, Sudan Country Director at the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPR). The panellists assessed the entry points for non-military actors in the ongoing war, their level of influence and the challenges they face.

The third panel focused on the negotiation and mediation efforts in Sudan. For this discussion Ambassador Eng. Mahoub Maalim, Former Secretary General of IGAD, Ambassador Nureldin Satti; former Ambassador of Sudan to the United States, France, Portugal, Switzerland and the Vatican, Osama Tageldin, Sudanese Senior Officer at the UNDP Sudan, and Heiko Nitzschke, Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa of the Federal Foreign Office, Republic of Germany, constituted the panel. They gave an overview of the previous mediation and negotiation processes, with a specific focus on the Jeddah talks and the Paris Conference and their positive effects. Furthermore, they outlined the failures of these negotiation efforts and gave a way forward on how future negotiations should be organised.

The last panel of the day was on the possibilities of state reconstruction in Sudan. Amgad Fareid El-Tayeb, CEO Frika for Studies and Development and Idris Salah, the Programme Officer of the Regional Center on Small Arms (RECSA), joined Profesoor Fred Jonyo, Lecturer of Political Science, University of Nairobi, on the panel. They assessed the possibility of reconstructing the Sudan state amidst the sustained crumbling of state, political and military structures. This panel was followed by an open discussion, recommendations on the way forward, and closing remarks by Angella Kasekende, Project Manager at the KAS RP SIPODI East Africa, and Dr Hassan Khannenje, Director of the HORN International Institute for Strategic Studies.