Sudan and the SDGs

Gender Centre for Research and Training

As a developing country, Sudan needs to accelerate progress towards achieving all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. On its current situation, quicker progress is essential on all levels and fronts. Given Sudan is a country living with armed conflict, injustice and authoritarianism, Sudan’s civil society organisations were highly motivated to work on SDG16 and a report was developed prior to the HLPF in 2019.

The genuine causes of the revolution of December 2019 included economic and political marginalisation, lack of democracy, poor governance, and severe economic hardship and impoverishment. All these contributed to the ignition of civil wars and conflicts in South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur.

The two driving forces of the revolution that played a leading role in toppling the Al-Bashir regime were:

  • Youth who suffered high unemployment and were the main victims of wars and political exclusion; and
  • Women who faced decades of oppression and injustices.

This revolution has created ambitious demands for security and peace building, and for economic, political and social reform in the country (SDGs 10 and 16). The major challenge for transformation, however, remains the existence of numerous armed groups in the country with different visions, in addition to the economic crisis, massive debt and the presence of large numbers of IDPs and refugees, all these are challenge that face the efforts to stop the wars and build sustainable peace.

The recently stated transitional civil government has initiated peace talks to stop the war and sustain the peace with all the armed forces including civil groups from the east and north of the country, which are marginalised areas affected from the lack of balance development and fair resources distribution.

Recently, number of primary agreements have been signed between the government delegation and some of the armed groups particularly the revolution alliance and have identified some priorities. Therefore, the national transitional government should pay great attention to the alignment of its policies, processes and plans with structural arrangements undertaken to achieve progress in SDG16 given the considerable gaps that have persisted over the years particularly with regard to the peaceful society concept, eliminating disparities, women rights and gender concerns, building and re-structuring effective and transparent institutions should be the priority of the current transitional period.

Popular protests celebrating law made by the transitional authority to dismantle the structures of the previous regime.