UK admits failure to grasp Sudan civil war threat when peace work axed

A document released by the U.K. government acknowledges its failure to fully understand the risk of civil war breaking out in Sudan when it controversially axed a peace-building program as part of wider aid cuts. The £2.6 million ($2.8 million) Sudan Transitional Programme — scrapped after just 10 months — was given the task of developing a “better understanding of emerging conflicts” but it “missed several outcome targets,” the assessment acknowledges. The admission is revealed following strong criticism of the U.K. for scaling back efforts to “support the peace process” in the years before fighting erupted between rival factions of Khartoum’s military government, which emerged during a parliamentary hearing in April. As the penholder for Sudan at the United Nations, and one of the largest donors to the country, the U.K. is seen as a key player. But it faces accusations that it was “caught off guard” by the civil war. After the Sudan program was shut down in March 2021, a Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office review acknowledged the move had “severely limited the outcomes delivered.” However, FCDO declined to explain the marking system used for different aspects of the program. Details have now been released to Devex after a freedom of information request. They show the aim to achieve a “better understanding of emerging conflicts, threats and drivers including the impacts on girls and women” was awarded the lowest score of any of the objectives set — a “2,” meaning “several” targets were “missed.” The work was funded by the U.K.’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, or CSSF, but was halted as CSSF funding in sub-Saharan Africa plunged by 44% between 2019-20 and 2021-22, from £61.3 million to £34.4 million. Kholood Khair, the director of the Sudan-based think tank Confluence Advisory, said the document appeared to confirm fears that winding up the peace-building work had contributed to the U.K. being left in the dark. “The severe cuts to the CSSF programme in 2021 resulted in the embassy not being able to track sufficiently how things were unfolding in the run up to the war in Sudan,” she told Devex in an email. Khair suggested a Strategic Support Unit at the British Council “had picked up on the escalating situation,” arguing “troop movements and bellicose language” were “pretty obvious signs of an impending conflict.” “It seems either it was not heeded by the embassy, or the absence of such a programme as CSSF meant the embassy did not have additional sources of information on the ground,” she added. The axed program was intended to support Sudan by deploying “an experienced peace process advisor,” providing “technical support and capacity building” for negotiations and strengthening “community level conflict resolution mechanisms and early recovery support.” This included a contribution to the U.N. Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan “for the collection of early warning conflict indicators,” the FCDO document states. In May, the Cabinet Office Minister of State Lucy Jeanne Neville-Rolfe, bowed to pressure to investigate any link between the premature winding up of work with civil society groups and a lack of intelligence about the looming war. Tobias Ellwood, a former Conservative Party defense minister, accused Neville-Rolfe of having “no Sudan strategy,” telling her somebody did not “need to be an Africa specialist” to know the country had stood on the brink of conflict. In a statement last week, the U.K.’s development minister Andrew Mitchell called the widespread violence and growing evidence of atrocities against civilians in Sudan “horrific.” “The UK is working hard to end the fighting in Sudan, including bolstering our capacity to monitor the atrocities that are taking place,” Mitchell said.