Sudan: Secretary Antony J. Blinken at a UN Security Council Meeting on Sudan

New York —
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken participates in a UN Security Council Session on Sudan in New York City, New York.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  I thank Mr. Bahr El Din for his briefing.  I shall now make a statement in my capacity as the Secretary of State of the United States, and let me again thank each of our briefers for their powerful testimony.  It was very important for this council to hear it.

To our fellow council members, on December 19th, 2018 – six years ago today – the people of Sudan rose up to topple a dictator and reclaim their own futures.

Who can forget the iconic image of Alaa Salah – Lady Liberty of the Sudanese Revolution – standing on the roof of a car as she rallied her nation to a new path?

One student protester put it this way:  “We grinned with freedom on our face.”

Half a dozen years later, we see on too many Sudanese faces hunger, despair.

The military takeover in 2021, the brutal fighting that erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces in April 2023 have derailed Sudan’s transition to democracy and unleashed what is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

Each day, as you heard from our briefers, brings new atrocities: attacks on hospitals, on markets, displaced persons camps.  Summary executions.  Women and girls subjected to unspeakable sexual violence.  We continue to see war crimes and crimes against humanity committed across vast parts of Sudan.

In Zamzam, people have resorted to eating grass and peanut shells.  By some estimates, a child there dies every two hours for lack of food.

And the effects of this tragedy extend well beyond Sudan’s borders.

Over 3 million Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries.

Outside actors are arming and supporting both parties, turning an internal power struggle into a conflict with global dimensions.

In short, failure to act in Sudan threatens the peace and security that this council is charged with preserving.

The world cannot – must not – look away from the humanitarian catastrophe that is happening in Sudan on our watch, before our eyes.

The United States has worked intensively with partners to provide relief to the Sudanese people, to end hostilities, to return Sudan to the path of democracy.

We’ve been the largest provider of humanitarian aid to the people of Sudan.

Today, we’re announcing an additional roughly $200 million more for food, for shelter, for health care, bringing total U.S. support to more than $2.3 billion since fighting broke out last year.

In August, the United States launched a new initiative, Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan, co-hosted by Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, in partnership with Egypt, with the UAE, with the African Union, and with the United Nations.

ALPS, as it’s called, built on earlier work in Jeddah and Paris.  And it incorporates Sudanese civil society, including Sudanese women, who are both disproportionately harmed by the violence and essential to ending it.

Alongside our partners, the United States successfully pressed Sudanese authorities to reopen major transportation arteries across Sudan, including, as you’ve heard, the Adré border crossing into Darfur.  These efforts have allowed aid to reach more than 3.5 million people across Sudan.

We enabled humanitarian air operations to resume for the first time since the conflict began, meaning that a trip that might have taken two days over flooded and bombed-out roads can now take just one hour.

With U.S. leadership, the UN and the Sudanese ministry of health vaccinated over 1.4 million people against cholera, achieving 98 percent coverage in hard-hit areas.

So this is important progress.  It is saving lives.  But it is nowhere near enough.

So let me suggest today four ways that we can intensify our efforts.

First, we have to get more aid, more relief where it’s needed most – safely, rapidly, unhindered.

In November, aid groups distributed 19,000 metric tons of assistance in Sudan.  That was a fourfold increase since August.  Yet to even come close to meeting the immense demand, we need to double that: 40,000 metric tons every single month.

It means the international community has to give more to support those in Sudan as well as refugees in countries like Egypt and Chad that are so generously hosting them.

To deliver that assistance, we must finalize and sustain humanitarian corridors that allow aid to get into contested areas.

Thirty-one World Food Program trucks are now rolling toward a part of Khartoum that had been cut off from humanitarian support since April of 2023.

We have to build on this momentum and regularize this corridor, as well as the ones into El Fasher, into Gezira, into El Obeid.

Assistance must also be permitted not only to cross the border into Sudan, but to cross territory that is held by the two sides.  Both parties have created obstacles, whether it’s bombs or bullets or bureaucracy.  Lives depend on this – depends on flowing aid freely across lines of control.

We have to ensure that aid can be dispensed more efficiently.  The Sudanese authorities have allowed the UN to open three new humanitarian hubs and let international aid workers move freely about Sudan.

Standing up a fourth hub in Central Darfur’s Zalingei is also vital.  It’s time for the United Nations and humanitarian community to activate these facilities and scale up aid delivery as soon, as quickly as possible.

Second, this council must press both warring parties to protect civilians, to stop atrocities, to end the fighting.

The ALPS Group has proposed a compliance mechanism – a committee with representation from the SAF, from the RSF, from the international community – to ensure that each side upholds international law and their commitments under the Jeddah Declaration.

As I said a year ago when determining that both the SAF and the RSF had committed war crimes – and that the RSF had committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, specifically designating the atrocities against the Masalit described by the sultan as ethnic cleansing – the United States will use every tool, including further determinations and sanctions, to prevent abuses and hold perpetrators accountable.

We encourage other partners to implement similar sanctions – bilaterally, multilaterally – on individuals, on organizations whose actions worsen the conflict.

Third, the council must make clear to the outside actors fanning the flames in Sudan that this conduct cannot continue.

Last month, the United Kingdom and Sierra Leone put forward a resolution that called for a nationwide ceasefire, increased civilian protection, and the unhindered flow of aid.

Fourteen members – including the United States – voted in favor of this resolution.

One member – Russia – vetoed.  They called the resolution, and I quote, “absurd and unacceptable.”

Here’s what’s “absurd and unacceptable”: any country professing to care about African nations while continuing to fuel Africa’s largest war.

So to the foreign sponsors sending drones, missiles, mercenaries – enough.

To those profiting off the illicit oil and gold trade that fund this conflict – enough.

Use your resources to ease Sudanese suffering, not deepen it.

Use your influence to end the war, not perpetuate it.

Don’t just claim to be concerned about Sudan’s future, prove it.

Finally, we must all continue to support the Sudanese people as they work to revive this transition to inclusive, civilian-led democratic governance.

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In September, the African Union reiterated its call for Sudan to return to a constitutional and civilian-led order.  The United States endorses this call.  This entire council should do so as well.

To further advance the restoration of civilian governance, to help realize the aspirations of the Sudanese people, I’m announcing today that the State Department will work with Congress to provide $30 million to empower civil society and elevate civilian voices in the dialogue about Sudan’s future.

Even as the bombs continue to fall, the people of Sudan are not waiting to lead.  Across the country, they’re banding together to support one another and to rebuild their nation.

Volunteers – many of them young people – are preparing food at local soup kitchens in Darfur.  They’re offering coloring books to traumatized children.  They’re running health clinics; they’re repairing collapsed electrical lines.

There’s even a word for the selflessness that these citizens are demonstrating daily – a deep-rooted Sudanese tradition called nafeer.

Nafeer is a sense of solidarity, a commitment to mutual aid, a community springing into action in times of need.  It translates, literally, as “a call to mobilize.”

So as a council, we too should answer that call.  We too should mobilize.

We have a responsibility – a responsibility to stop the suffering, to end this war, to support the Sudanese people so that – in the words of that protester – freedom is once again on their faces.  I ask you – all of us – let’s seize this moment.  And I thank you.

I resume my function as president of the council, and I now give the floor to His Excellency Mr. José De La Gasca, Minister of Government of Ecuador.

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