Policy Paper: Toward a New Civil Architecture for Peace Processes
Integrating Independent Civilian Oversight into Negotiations and Discussions to End the War in Sudan
Preparations for the political process and negotiations aimed at ending the war in Sudan are entering a phase marked by turning points and cumulative structural imbalances. Since the launch of the Jeddah platform in May 2023, through numerous talks and meetings in Geneva, Manama, Cairo, and elsewhere, and leading up to the exploratory consultations sponsored by the Quintet Mechanism in June 2026 in Addis Ababa, a series of international and regional platforms and initiatives have formed with the goal of achieving a ceasefire and launching a political path to end the war. However, these efforts have shared a single structural flaw: the absence of an independent civilian oversight mechanism that supports these tracks by increasing the indirect participation of Sudanese citizens, enhancing process transparency, and fostering national ownership through monitoring the progression and outcomes of negotiations and keeping the public informed of their agenda and results. While this gap was not the sole cause of the negotiations' stumbling, it weakened the political processes' capacity to build transparency, provide reliable information, establish institutional arrangements that reinforce accountability, engage stakeholders, and secure national ownership of the political process.
This paper addresses an institutional gap in the design of Sudanese peace processes—namely, the lack of an independent civilian mechanism for monitoring, verification, and public communication to accompany the political process from its earliest stages. This absence has limited the ability of these tracks to provide reliable information to the public, link the political process to communities affected by the war, and reinforce national ownership of its outcomes.
This paper proposes the establishment of the "Joint Civilian Engagement Window" as an independent civilian oversight mechanism that brings together national, regional, and international components. It would be tasked with systemically monitoring the progression of the political process, tracking the implementation of ceasefire arrangements and humanitarian corridors, and generating reliable information to support mediators and decision-makers. Furthermore, it would facilitate communication with stakeholders and the public while respecting the confidentiality requirements essential to certain negotiation stages. The Youth Network for Civilian Oversight believes that its field-monitoring and documentation expertise can contribute meaningfully to the national component of this mechanism, alongside other Sudanese civil society organizations.
Comparative international experiences indicate that the absence of regular channels for information sharing and communication during peace processes creates an information vacuum. This space is quickly filled by competing narratives and conflicting interpretations of the political process. From this perspective, this paper frames independent civilian oversight as an institutional tool designed to foster transparency and information availability, rather than a replacement for the roles of mediators or official verification mechanisms.
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