In some cases, these might be topics that were under-covered. Others received significant coverage but still may have implications that merit more attention.

There are of course far more developments that are noteworthy than a single recap can capture, and we encourage you to keep an eye out for other “looking back, looking ahead” style articles on Just Security in the days and weeks ahead. But in the midst of a news environment dominated by attention-grabbing headlines and algorithms commodifying our attention, we hope that this compilation will provide an opportunity to step back and reflect on some of the important trends shaping our world today.

Climate Milestones and Misses

Global climate progress in 2025 was, in a word, uneven, reflecting an ever-widening gap between ambition and the ability to mobilize that ambition into concrete global action. Two highly-anticipated advisory opinions – from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in May and from the International Court of Justice in July – took strong positions with respect to States’ obligations in relation to climate change, as analyzed on Just Security here and here.

But in practice, climate diplomacy produced relatively weak results; at COP 30 in Belém, for example, there was little progress on crucial questions such as countries’ specific individual commitments to emissions reduction. Earlier this year, analysts described a much-anticipated climate announcement from China as likewise underwhelming, and the year of course was also marked by the United States’ highly visible retreat from global climate engagement – with some signs that U.S. state and local governments may be seeking openings to engage even as the national government pulls back.

Meanwhile, one relatively undercovered story in climate diplomacy was the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ), or High Seas Treaty, which received sufficient ratifications this fall to enter into force in January 2026. It creates the first comprehensive legal framework for protecting biodiversity on the high seas, an area covering nearly half the earth’s surface, and is notable as a milestone in climate-biodiversity governance and as a sign that international treaty-making continues to function even in an environment of increasing uncertainty.

(Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s Climate Archive.)

In the Age of Generative AI, How Do We Know What We Know?

This year saw what seemed to be a near-constant rollout of generative AI tools, including new versions of consumer-facing large-language models (LLMs), an explosion in AI video content, and the continued development of sector-specialized generative models. Among the many complex questions raised by the ubiquity of generative AI, one relatively under-covered angle involved epistemic risks: how society and institutions create and understand knowledge, and how we validate what information to trust.

This can play out in different ways across different types of use. Some specialized AI models used for professional purposes may develop faster than users – even very expert users – can fully understand the model’s inputs, limitations, and biases, potentially degrading the quality of knowledge production and eroding public trust in information. In general consumer uses, the ubiquity of AI-generated content may threaten the (already tenuous) social agreement about reality. AI video, for instance, presents new challenges for civilian protection and evidence collection: not only that manipulated images will be taken as true but also that very real evidence, including of atrocities, might be dismissed as AI.

Scholars have been grappling with these questions for several years now. But with the explosion of public-facing AI, the risk becomes that products will move into common use, and policymakers will be charged with regulating them, before the relevant public fully understands those risks and limitations. In July of this year, for example, some scholars expressed concern about this very knowledge gap when the EU released its General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, providing guidance on how the 2024 AI Act should be applied to general-purpose AI tools like LLMs.

With AI now shaping our physical world as much as our digital one, understanding and communicating about these epistemic gaps is likely to be a key theme of 2026.

(Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s archive of artificial intelligence articles.)

“A Tale of Two Courts” at the ICC

The story of the International Criminal Court (ICC) this year was, in the words of Just Security Editorial Board member and former ICC Prosecutions Coordinator Alex Whiting, “a tale of two courts.”

On the one hand, developments like sanctions in connection to the Palestine situation and allegations against Prosecutor Karim Khan, now on leave pending investigation, drew headlines.

But against that backdrop, the Court also managed to continue its work and achieve meaningful progress in many areas this year: the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, convictions in the Sudan Situation and a case from the Central African Republic, the first arrest and surrender of an accused in the Libya Situation, the confirmation of charges in absentia in the Joseph Kony case, and launching of new policies, including on environmental crimes and cyber-enabled crimes. (Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s ICC coverage, in which authors analyze a number of these developments.)

Observes Whiting: “This is not to minimize the challenges faced by the Court, or some of the structural problems that may exist within the Rome Statute, but under the direction of the Deputy Prosecutors and the judges, the Court is continuing to function and do its work. The Court is not invulnerable, but it is resilient.”

ICRC Updates Civilian Protection Guidance to Reflect Realities of Modern Warfare

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) this year published its updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians (GCIV), the core humanitarian treaty governing civilian protection in international armed conflict and occupation. This marks the last in a cycle of modernizing the commentaries to the Geneva Conventions, after which the ICRC will turn to the Additional Protocols.

The Commentaries provide interpretive guidance on how the Geneva Conventions’ rules should be applied in real-world situations. Given the importance of GCIV in the protection of civilians while under increasing threat in conflicts around the globe (see, for example, the next entry on this list), and the many ways in which armed conflict has changed in the 60-plus years since the last round of Commentaries, this update was particularly anticipated. There is no expectation, of course, that it will provide a panacea, but by updating the guidance to reflect the conditions of today’s armed conflicts, the ICRC reaffirms the centrality of the fundamental legal protections owed to civilians.

Watch this space for a series from international humanitarian law experts analyzing the updated Commentary, coming jointly from Just Security, the ICRC, and EJIL:Talk! early in the new year.

Humanitarian Catastrophe in Sudan

The brutal civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), now well into its third year, has triggered the largest displacement crisis in the world, with approximately 12 million people forcibly displaced as of Dec. 1, and estimates from earlier this year of over 30 million people in need of humanitarian aid. Civilians are subjected to direct and brutal violence from the conflict itself, while also suffering from a health system under strain; malnutrition, and in some areas famine; and repeated outbreaks of cholera, dengue, and other diseases.

As authors writing on Just Security and elsewhere have repeatedly observed, the scale of global attention – in the press, from the public, and from policymakers – fails to match the scale of the atrocities. At the same time the global community faces the urgent task of addressing the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan, it also faces the question of how one of the worst global crises has unfolded with so little international attention.

A Power Vacuum in Public Health Leadership

While the Trump administration’s controversial cuts to public health programs, including the dismantling of Centers for Disease Control initiatives, the dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), dominated headlines, a less-publicized consequence was the response to the resulting power vacuum in public health leadership.

Within the United States, regional public health alliances emerged, primarily among Democratic-led states in the west and northeast. However, even as state and local governments stepped in to fill the gaps, they faced deep budget cuts from federal health programs.

Globally, a July 2025 study in The Lancet estimated that U.S. cuts to public health aid could lead to 14 million additional deaths by 2030. A December 2025 response from other scholars argued that the study’s assumptions were being contradicted by real-world developments. “People, institutions, and governments in several countries have responded to the moment,” they noted, by shifting budgets, reforming supply systems, and increasing aid from other nations—challenging the notion that U.S. leadership is indispensable to global health efforts.

But while European countries, China, and global solidarity networks have been suggested as alternatives to fill the gaps, a real funding shortfall remains. The UK and European Union member states, led by Germany (which recently became home to a new WHO center) have visibly assumed a more prominent role in global public health leadership. However, many are also scaling back their overseas development assistance due to their own budget constraints. China’s public health contributions, especially in Africa, are notable but far smaller than the resources previously provided by USAID.

Ultimately, these cuts have sparked efforts to explore alternative solutions, both domestically and internationally, but these initiatives are constrained by undeniable resource limitations.

(Readers may also be interested in the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of Trump Administration Executive Actions.)

The Double-Edged Sword of U.S.-Belarus Rapprochement

From Just Security Washington Senior Editor Viola Gienger, who curates much of the site’s content on rule of law and diplomacy related to eastern Europe:

Belarus generally garners little attention in the Western news media, and that includes this year’s curious rapprochement between the Trump administration and longtime Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenka, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Trump overtures even merited the appointment of a specific U.S. special envoy for Belarus, former Trump lawyer John Coale.

The result has been several major releases of Belarusian political prisoners in exchange for easing of sanctions — the husband of opposition leader in exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in June, a mass release of 52 prisoners in September and another of 123 in December, the latter of which included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski and opposition figures Maria Kolesnikova and Viktar Babaryka.

Despite the recent prisoner releases, Lukashenka (whose 2020 electoral “win” was widely recognized by impartial monitors as fraudulent) continues to play a double game, cracking down on dissent and jailing others, under conditions of abuse and torture, even amid the periodic releases.

Lukashenka has played the West off against Putin for decades, and he became an influential, though still minor, factor after Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when the longtime Belarusian leader allowed Russian troops onto his territory for their military operations against Ukraine while at the same time declining to send his own forces to aid the Russians on the battlefield. There also have been persistent reports that Lukashenka allowed Russian nuclear weapons onto Belarus territory, and he played a role in the saga of the failed apparent coup against Putin by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023 that ended in his demise a few months later in a plane crash. Given this history, Lukashenka’s latest opening to the West merits a close watch as the United States seeks to broker a peace agreement to end Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

U.S.-Canada Tensions: More Than a Meme

While new U.S. alliances emerged in 2025, other longstanding partnerships faltered. Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in diplomatic fractures that appeared between the United States and Canada, long one of the world’s most stable relationships.

Although President Donald Trump’s repeated suggestions to make Canada the “51st state” generated headlines, memes, and jokes, the absurdity of the situation itself became the story, obscuring a more consequential and potentially lasting geopolitical shift.

The Canadian public, already sensitive to issues of sovereignty and autonomy, increasingly viewed U.S. rhetoric as disregard for the bilateral relationship. In an Ipsos poll this fall, six in ten Canadians surveyed said they could never trust Americans in the same way again, while seven in ten anticipated similar trade and economic disputes between the countries for at least several years to come.

Despite these tensions, Canada and the United States continue to maintain productive diplomatic relations on issues like mutual defense under the North American Aerospace Defense Command and Arctic cooperation. However, Canada is also exploring new partnerships, including closer links to Europe. And while it has often followed the U.S. lead on foreign policy issues such as China, it may soon face new questions about whether to chart its own independent path in the new geopolitical landscape.

Latin America’s Rightward Swing

In Chile, a presidential candidate who openly praised former dictator Augusto Pinochet won with a tough-on-crime and anti-immigration platform. In Bolivia, after two decades of socialist rule, a centrist candidate triumphed, his closest opponent not from the left but from the right. In Argentina, libertarian President Javier Milei’s party enjoyed a “decisive” congressional elections win despite governing amidst continued economic turmoil, with voters apparently unconvinced they would fare better under left-wing policies.

Elections in Latin America in 2025 didn’t universally swing right; in Honduras, for example, left-wing incumbent President Xiomara Castro appears to have won against a Trump-backed challenger. (Author’s note, Dec. 26: In fact, conservative candidate Nasry Asfura was finally declared the winner of the Nov. 30 election on Dec. 24, with claims of irregularities still maintained from both sides.) But there was certainly an observable trend, as populist rhetoric, “law and order” pledges, and economic frustration seemed to fuel a shift toward more conservative or centrist candidates in a region where the left had done well in recent decades, and where right-wing governance had often been associated with the legacy of dictatorship.

But as a recent Foreign Affairs article observed, “the idea that the right is inherently or uniquely authoritarian has lost traction in today’s Latin America, where all three cases of clear-cut dictatorship are on the ideological left: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.” Traditional left-wing promises of social progress appear to be less convincing to voters than frustration with the political establishment’s perceived failures to address crime and inflation.

High-profile elections in the region will continue in 2026, including in Peru, where one of the leading candidates is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted for human rights abuses from his time in power in the 1990s; and Brazil, where recent polls have the left-wing incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of potential rivals, including the son of imprisoned ex-president Jair Bolsonaro. But with the elections months away, much can still change.

The post Nine Stories That Deserved More Attention in 2025 – and Might Shape 2026 appeared first on Just Security.

Sadly, many of today’s leaders in government and industry continue to resist full transparency and accountability. After more than two decades of using sanctions and anti-money laundering tools, and 15 years of the that was set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the world still has not made sufficient progress in protecting these supply chains from illicit channels and benefiting the people in the countries where they come out of the ground. A remarkable new investigation from the Global Investigative Journalism Network is just the latest example showing how the illegal trade works from South America and the relatively easy way that due diligence and other mechanisms can be circumvented, including from heavily-sanctioned countries like Venezuela, just as SwissAid documented at a broader level related to sub-Saharan Africa in 2024.

And the world will never accomplish that goal of ensuring resources benefit communities all along the supply chain as long as the tools that government and industry use remain essentially separate and distinct, even in the light of reporting such as those above from civil society and the media. Having wrestled with these issues in and out of government over two decades, I have to conclude that:

(a) governments usually don’t know who enough of the bad actors are, and industry is not encouraged to share that information, and

(b) industry often would like to engage more deeply and report more openly on these issues but does not have specific direction or safe harbor from government (or civil society) to do so.

As a result, governments take sporadic actions and some in industry do what they can, but most actors across the board simply look the other way when confronted with hard questions because of the emphasis on process and auditing over decision-making and change. All the while, supply chains carry on, decisions are made daily to keep purchasing minerals and refined products in the face of what should be significant flags, and while many people in producing and refining countries do earn livings and some of the countries develop, far too many individuals and economies continue to suffer.

The Successes

Certainly the effort to promote the concept of due diligence and transparency in the minerals supply chain has been a success. Twenty years ago, very few such systems were in place. Multi-stakeholder initiatives like the Kimberley Process, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, and Voluntary Principles had all just come online, but each was focused on a specific subset of issues — rebel movements, security forces, payments, etc. — rather than taking a holistic approach to supply chains.

With the adoption of Dodd-Frank Section 1502 by the United States in July 2010 in response to the conflicts in the DRC at the time, the effort by the OECD to develop an approach to minerals supply chains was pushed into overdrive. And it succeeded when in 2011 the OECD adopted its Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains for Minerals from Conflict Affected and High Risk Areas (OECD Guidance). Over time, the OECD Guidance succeeded in becoming a baseline for what companies and industry sectors should do and what they should consider in terms of establishing due diligence systems for evaluating and organizing their supply chains.

The OECD has maintained its status as the center of the due diligence world, with an annual forum held every spring — the next one is set to begin on Monday, May 5 — that now brings upwards of 1,000 attendees from across the globe and all sectors to discuss the key challenges and issues. The OECD has also pushed to ensure the forum and its work includes the voices of producers from Africa and Latin America, refineries/smelters in China and the United Arab Emirates, and other non-OECD countries that are essential to the functioning of minerals supply chains.

The Key Questions

In recent years, though, the key questions on the minds of many in the policy world and in industry has been why has there not been more progress? Why are so many supply chains still connected to conflict and other abuses? What comes next? Especially after the Government Accountability Office in the United States declared in 2024 that Dodd Frank 1502 did not succeed in breaking the link between minerals and conflict in Eastern DRC (and may have even exacerbated it, to a degree), companies across all sectors are asking why not and what more can they do.

And in a world where the future of concepts such as environmental, social, and governance principles (ESG), “responsible” business, and related standards is at best uncertain, many companies are asking themselves why they are spending money and risking their reputations on these efforts? Why should they care more than governments appear to care about the role that gold or cobalt or tantalum plays in one conflict or another? 

The Tools Needed to Reach the Goal 

This is where government must step in with clear guidance and openness to intelligence-sharing, and companies must reciprocate with more transparency in processes and audits and with due diligence that takes into account the results of supply chain decisions actually taken in high-risk areas — rather than focusing mostly on processes and procedures.

Much ink has been spilled in recent years for policy recommendations on how to ensure a “just transition” to clean energy and that various critical minerals needed for that transition can be managed through responsible supply chains. And that follows a similarly endless discussion related to the side effects of the gold trade over the last two decades.

Most of those ideas and recommendations are fine and good, as far as they go. But to say that implementation of those recommendations and ideas is lacking would be an understatement, especially with the Trump administration’s focus on making deals as quickly as possible, including with players who may or may not be focused first and foremost on “responsibility.”

The core missing piece has been how to get rid of the malevolent actors who continue to profit from these materials, whether in the mining, transport, or processing. When those ideas do come up, they usually generate little more than a passing nod to sanctions.

To be sure, sanctions should continue to be used and can be effective, at least in providing short-term disruptions. The problem is governments rarely know who to target, and even when they do, legitimate companies traditionally just go as far as ensuring they do not do business with the sanctioned individual or entity rather than understanding the broader network and typology being used. As such, companies are then able to integrate their sanctions due diligence into their broader OECD due diligence and feel that they have done their best.

But all the while, parts of those simply chains continue to support bad actors. Sudan’s ongoing genocide and atrocities, for example, would almost certainly not have been able to continue without the funding provided by gold, with Sudan being a large producer and the UAE, in particular, willing to import gold form the country, according to multiple in-depth media and NGO reports. But although there have been a few Sudanese actors sanctioned for their role in the gold trade and the United States declared all Sudanese gold to be considered conflict-affected and high risk in June 2023, neither the gold sector nor governments have been able to target sufficiently the actors profiting the most from Sudan’s suffering, nor has it become a major issue within the industry.

The time has come for more joint action and accountability rather than working in parallel, whether to deal with specific cases like Sudan, or more generally. This should include the following:

• Because gold is regulated under anti-money laundering provisions, the U.S. and U.K. governments can begin by using the convening power of the USA PATRIOT Act Section 314(b) and “FinCEN Exchange” (or, in the U.K., the Joint Money Laundering Intelligence Taskforce), respectively, to bring the gold sector (both larger initiatives like the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and the World Gold Council (WGC) and their member refiners and miners, but smaller entities along the supply chain as well), financial institutions, and governments together to share intelligence and information on bad actors. This should start most urgently by focusing on Sudan, the DRC, certain refineries and traders in the UAE and Hong Kong, and other well-documented countries of concern. From these ongoing exchanges, specific interdisciplinary investigations can be launched and more impactful actions taken.
• Although critical minerals such as cobalt, copper, and nickel are not regulated by anti-money-laundering laws and thus intelligence-sharing mechanisms do not readily exist, the United States and other governments should identify mechanisms through which this can be developed. For example, the U.S. could consider how to empower companies that are members of the Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade, which offers vetting and an established relationship, to receive and integrate specific intelligence on negative actors. Over time, this could be extended to entities undertaking minerals-focused investigations on due diligence as well.
• Having opened their own files, governments can then come from a stronger position to encourage — if not require — more thorough and transparent due diligence conduct and reporting that looks not simply at processes but also decision-making and results. This, in turn, requires much more focused and concentrated auditing in response to business risk advisories and other guidance issued by governments about specific issues and areas of concern. Governments should continue to find ways to encourage more transparency with respect to due diligence reporting and auditing, such as resurrecting a version of the Responsible Investing Reporting Requirements and adapting it to minerals supply chains.
• Certification systems must use these advisories as a form of due diligence directives and adapt them to provide specific guidance to members on where their supply chain due diligence must focus to address the most critical risks and also what kinds of actions they should be taking in response to those risks. Auditors must call companies to task and be willing to fail more companies when their processes do not yield clear and demonstrable results against these specifically identified risks, and the auditors themselves should be called to account when they do insufficient work.

To be sure, this focus on rooting out bad actors and eliminating sourcing that exacerbates conflict must also be coupled with greater and more committed upstream development programming and funding. Put another way, for as much as industry and governments need to collaborate in new ways to root out bad actors, they must also innovate and maintain commitments to build up responsible actors, especially in countries and communities where negative actors have been involved. Development-focused organizations have been doing this work for decades and continue to innovate in new directions to achieve those ends, whether on formalization, financing, environmental remediation, or gender security and equity, and beyond. Although individual companies and entities like the LBMA and WGC have undertaken some efforts to engage in these areas, much more is needed.

The Trump administration’s destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development and shifting of aid budgets in other countries unquestionably complicates this need. The private sector must step into this breach, again helped by intelligence-sharing from governments, whether because of the responsibility companies have to the communities from where their raw materials emanate, or because of the need to ensure consistent supply chains, or because, over time, consumers continue to demand that level of information.

Enter … Moses?

At the end of the Book of Exodus, none other than Moses is exposed to the need for transparency in minerals supply chains and maintaining trust with the community. In Chapter 38, there is a “tally of the metals,” in which the various materials used to construct the Tabernacle were recorded in careful detail. Coming after some of the most dramatic scenes in the Bible documenting the Exodus, this is a fairly mundane recitation of how many shekels and talents (another currency of the time) of gold, silver, and copper were being used and how many remained in inventory.

The sourcing of the gold was, itself, somewhat dubious, as much of it was likely stolen and plundered from Egypt as the people left, with the rest likely purchased en route. But then there is the question of why the Bible goes through this detailed accounting. In one popular Jewish volume of the Torah, the authors interrogate this:

Why did Moses feel obliged to give this detailed account? Some Israelites knew that they would have taken advantage of handling all that gold and silver for their own enrichment. They suspected Moses of being no better than they were.

The Israelites were able to navigate the desert and experienced their share of conflict, but this principle of transparency and accountability for leadership bears returning to as the international community continues to grapple with the connection of the minerals trade — be it gold, cobalt, nickel, or diamonds — to conflict and endemic corruption across the world.

So perhaps in considering future interventions, it might be helpful to ask: What would Moses do?

The post Transparency for Minerals is Essential, and No One Can Go It Alone appeared first on Just Security.

How did Sudan get to this point? What’s the current state of play in Sudan, and where does the country — and the international community trying to support it — go from here? 

Joining the show to answer some of these crucial questions two years into the war in Sudan is Quscondy Abdulshafi. He is a Senior Regional Advisor at Freedom House and has more than a decade of experience working on governance, democracy, and human rights in Africa and the United States.  

Show Notes:

• Quscondy Abdulshafi’s article for Just Security, “Two Years of War in Sudan: From Revolution to Ruin and the Fight to Rise Again“
• Just Security Podcast episode “Assessing the Origins, Dynamics, and Future of Conflict in Sudan” with Executive Editor Matiangai Sirleaf, and three experts, Laura Nyantung Beny, Nisrin Elamin, Hamid Khalafallah, on Oct. 11, 2024.  
• Just Security Sudan Archive
• Music: “Broken” by David Bullard from Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/david-bullard/broken (License code: OSC7K3LCPSGXISVI)

The post The Just Security Podcast: Sudan Marks Two Years of War appeared first on Just Security.

Recent RSF moves to form a parallel government signal a dangerous drift toward chaotic semi-partition, threatening a prolonged conflict that would destabilize the entire Sahel and Horn of Africa regions.

Once celebrated for its inspiring nonviolent revolution in 2019 that ousted long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir, Sudan is now engulfed in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Since the conflict broke out in April 2023, more than 15 million people have fled their homes and over 30 million people need aid, including 24.6 million facing acute hunger, according to United Nations agencies. And, although reliable numbers remain unknown, by some estimates, as many as 150,000 people have been killed in the first year of fighting alone. As the country marks two years of war this week, the question that looms large is whether hope for a democratic future still lives or has it vanished amid the gunfire and violence of war?

A Legacy of Nonviolent Resistance

Sudan’s history is punctuated by moments of extraordinary civilian-led resistance. In 1964, before the independence of several African countries, Sudanese civil society, professional unions, and political opposition ousted one of the first dictators of modern Africa, General Ibrahim Abboud. It did so again in 1985, when massive demonstrations eventually led to the removal of President Gaafar Nimeiry. And, in 2019, it was a peaceful popular uprising that took down Bashir. The 2019 revolution, led by a grassroots resistance, symbolized by its chant “Silmiya” (“peaceful” in Arabic), represented a shining moment of hope. The world watched in admiration as millions of Sudanese braved bullets and beatings to demand a democratic future. Their courage led to the fall of Bashir and a brief transitional government shared between civilians and the military.

But this fragile arrangement began to unravel quickly. In October 2021, the Sudanese military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, with help from the RSF and its commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, took control of the government in Khartoum. After the coup, however, a power struggle between the two military leaders emerged, abruptly exploding into open warfare in April 2023. The conflict ended nonviolent organizing, devastated cities, displaced millions, and pushed Sudan into chaos.

During the war, both the Sudanese army and the RSF have consistently targeted nonviolent pro-democracy activists with torture, arrest, and killing. These peaceful groups had to shift efforts from nonviolent political organizing to providing lifesaving aid in the absence of State institutions. The Sudanese army seeks to delegitimize these actors, painting them as foreign agents or insurgents affiliated to the rival RSF to justify its repression. The harm being done to these groups is not just collateral damage; it is a strategic assault on the very idea of democratic civilian governance.

Looming Partition Risks Regional Chaos

The core civic forces in Sudanese society, such as professional unions, civil society groups, and women and youth groups, who once marched peacefully for change, are now caught between conscription, displacement, or death. Sudan’s new militarized politics is pulling the nation toward fragmentation rather than a unified future, with grave consequences for the Sahel and Horn of Africa region.

The Sudanese army, in an effort to reinforce old power structures, has increasingly turned to local tribal militias and irregular insurgents, including groups such as Al-Baraa Brigades, as a counterweight to the RSF’s territorial gains in central and north Sudan. These alignments risk fueling a wider proxy war, dragging in regional actors and reigniting dormant conflicts along Sudan’s borders. Beyond Darfur and the Kordofan regions, the RSF is deeply intertwined with both ethnic and geopolitical dynamics across the Sahel. The RSF has longstanding ethnic and logistical ties to armed networks in Chad, Libya, Niger, Mali, and the Central African Republic, many of which have served as recruitment grounds and supply routes. These transnational connections allow the RSF to operate beyond Sudan’s borders, turning Darfur into a potential launchpad for instability across the region. Thus, the RSF’s calls to establish a “parallel” government, a de facto independent territory in Sudan, would not only threaten national unity but also would pose a significant threat to peace and security throughout the Sahel.

These war dynamics expose the fractured nature of Sudanese statehood, where competing visions of identity, governance, and external regional actors’ interests clash, threatening national cohesion more than ever. Sudan already experienced war-induced partition, when South Sudan became its own country in 2011. In that case, one failed State was divided into two failed States. This time, however, another partition — or establishment of semi-autonomous territories — will not only unleash new waves of genocide and mass atrocities but also destabilize the security of the broader region. The only way to break the cycle of war is to strengthen the nonviolent prodemocracy movement inside Sudan, so that military governance can someday be replaced.

Enduring Resilience

The conflict is not just a battle between two generals, it is a war on the Sudanese people and their democratic aspirations. The Sudanese civilian pro-democracy movement, despite having toppled three of Africa’s most notorious dictators, has been systematically targeted by both sides. Activists have been arrested, tortured, and in many cases, killed. Journalists have been silenced, civil society organizations shuttered, and peaceful protest banned.

The nonviolent movement has also suffered from internal divisions, fueled by the war and conflicting leadership visions and positions on the conflict. The absence of a shared vision and united front has not only undermined the movement’s credibility but also has given armed actors justification to further target it. Now more than ever, building unified leadership is essential to reviving a stronger pro-democracy movement that can carry forward the hopes and dreams of a peaceful, democratic Sudan.

Although diminished, the spirit of Sudan’s nonviolent movement has not been extinguished. After the war paralyzed the entire State system and destroyed basic means of survival, the core nonviolent groups, called the Resistance Committees, reconfigured themselves as Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), operating underground, coordinating aid, documenting atrocities, and keeping the dream of democracy alive. Working in independent and semi-isolated groups across the country, with no weapons, and few resources, the ERRs and other nonviolent groups possess moral clarity and the trust of the people they are serving, giving them more legitimacy than the Sudanese army or the RSF.

Thus, even under siege, civil resistance remains one of the most credible forces for positive change. Its resilience is rooted in its local legitimacy, its decentralized structure, and its unwavering commitment to peaceful transformation. Unlike the military factions, which thrive on coercion and division, the civilian movement draws strength from unity and a shared vision. It needs to be supported so that it can one day help shape not only a united, secure Sudan, but also a stable region.

Reviving Civic Space Starts in the Shattered Capital

Since independence in 1956, Sudan has remained an extremely centralized state, with political and administrative power concentrated in Khartoum. When war broke out in the capital in April 2023, it triggered the collapse of the entire state system. In March, the Sudanese army retook Khartoum. With RSF forces cleared from the capital, journalists were able to enter the city and collect survivors’ testimonies and document the extent of the city’s devastation. The military’s recapture of the city was followed by widespread extrajudicial killing of civilians by the army and allied militia. The military’s presence in Khartoum brings back memories of the Islamist era. This time, it is leveraging wartime fear to reassert its control.

Nevertheless, for many residents, ousting the RSF from the capital has ignited cautious hope for rebuilding obliterated infrastructure and reviving essential services. It could also open a path for revitalizing the nonviolent movement and restoring democratic aspirations. Supporting this return requires close monitoring of the nature of governance now taking shape under the military’s control. The international community must exert maximum pressure on warring parties to protect civil liberties and civic space in Khartoum. Doing so offers an opportunity to amplify the voices of Sudan’s silent majority and push for a peaceful democratic transition.

International actors must recalibrate their approach to Sudan. Efforts to end hostilities are commendable and a ceasefire would be a good first step, but it would not be sufficient. A lasting peace must reinvigorate civilian voices and lay the groundwork for civilian-led governance. Here are concrete policy actions that should be taken:

Expand and Strengthen Existing Sanctions to End Violence and Protect Civic Space: Existing sanctions by the United States, the U.N., the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada on armed actors and their affiliated businesses should be expanded to also target those responsible for violence against civic actors including journalists, resistance committees, opposition figures, and human rights defenders.

Impose Sanctions on Key External State Actors fueling the conflict: Additional sanctions should be levied by the U.N. Security Council and the United States on external State actors that sponsor the war and related pro-war illicit businesses. The United Arab Emirates, for example, is the main sponsor and business partner of the RSF, against whom Sudan submitted a case at the International Court of Justice. Egypt, on the other hand, remains a top ally of the Sudanese military by providing military and political support. Turkey has also played a destabilizing role by continuing to supply weapons to the army, prolonging the conflict. These external players have fueled the conflict, each backing opposing factions to advance their own strategic interests, making peace an increasingly elusive prospect.

Support Pro-Democracy Initiatives and Civil Society: Donors should continue to provide direct funding and logistical support to resistance committees, women, and youth-led initiatives, civil society, and independent media. This support should be flexible, allowing for safe convenings, secure communication, and local organizing.

Beyond Survival Aid to Reconstruction Where Possible: Ensure that aid reaches those in need by working with trusted local individuals and groups and implementing robust monitoring mechanisms to prevent diversion by armed groups. The aid efforts need to move beyond humanitarian assistance and support non-State pro-democracy organizations to lead sustainable food security and reconstruction of basic infrastructure, including local participatory governance systems for accountability. Reconstruction support through pro-democracy actors presents a greater opportunity to empower trusted, nonviolent leadership and reduce dependency on armed actors for survival.

Inclusive Mediation and Political Processes: Any diplomatic process must include a representative cross-section of Sudanese civil society, not just armed actors. Peace built on the exclusion of civilian voices will be inherently unstable.

A Different Future Is Still Possible

Since independence, Sudan has struggled to repair the structural damage left behind by British colonial rule. The legacy of centralized governance and deep social and regional inequalities fueled an unending saga of civil war. For decades, civilians from conflict-ridden regions in Sudan remained excluded, unable to find common ground with those in Khartoum who had never directly experienced war. The outbreak of war in Khartoum in April 2023 shattered this divide. For the first time, the violence reached the heart of the capital, leveling any illusion of distance from Sudan’s longstanding crises. The destruction has erased infrastructure, dismantled governance, and forced millions into displacement. It has taught the nation, painfully and collectively, that no one is immune.

Given the scale of suffering and the betrayal of the Sudanese people by those entrusted to guide the transition, despair among the population is understandable. But hope is not lost. It lives in camps sheltering Sudanese displaced within the country and abroad, as well as in diaspora communities and among those clinging together for survival. Most powerfully, it endures in the underground networks that deliver food, solidarity, and courage amid despair. It lives in the voices of women demanding justice despite the risks. It lives in the chants that continue to echo in the hearts of millions: “Freedom, peace, and justice.”

Sudan’s democratic future is not dead. It is under siege. And it needs allies not just in words, but in action. The world must not look away. It must stand with those who still believe a better Sudan is possible and who are risking everything to make it real.

IMAGE: Fighters loyal to the army patrol a market area in Khartoum on March 24, 2025. Sudan has been ravaged by a war between the regular army and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries, a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted 15 million and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises. (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

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For South Sudan and its citizens, the timing could hardly be worse. The country is on the brink of a renewed civil war, with little capacity to absorb returning citizens, who may well be at risk upon return. Moreover, given recent reporting about U.S. citizens being mistakenly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), there is a non-trivial risk of South Sudanese with dual nationality, permanent residence, or asylum status being inadvertently swept up in the enforcement actions that will flow from this announcement. 

The Trump administration may be in for more of a backlash than it expects. The breadth and depth of support for South Sudanese across red and blue states – and especially the longstanding commitment of the U.S. evangelical community to the people of South Sudan during their battle for independence from the Islamist Sudanese government – could generate enough pressure to force Rubio to withdraw, or at the very least, narrow the scope of the April 5 announcement.

Reporting the revocation, the New York Times drew an analogy to the high-profile dispute that President Donald Trump had in January with Colombian President Gustavo Petro over his refusal to accept flights of Colombian nationals deported from the United States. But that case, while also a form of high-stakes bullying, was meaningfully different, with visa restrictions applying specifically to Colombian officials and their families, on the grounds that they were “responsible for the interference of U.S. repatriation flight operations.” Here, the sanction of visa revocation appears to apply to all “South Sudanese passport holders.” In other words, the only criteria is nationality.

In targeting South Sudanese on the basis of their nationality, the administration appears to disregard – or not be aware of – the degree to which South Sudanese have become enmeshed in the fabric of the United States. South Sudan holds a unique position in terms of the degree to which Americans with no other ties to Africa are nonetheless familiar with this nascent nation. South Sudan’s independence from Sudan, won through a 2011 referendum, came after decades of carefully cultivated bipartisan U.S. support, with deep ties in the American evangelical movement.

Evangelist Reverend Franklin Graham’s humanitarian organization, Samaritan’s Purse, has been operating in South Sudan for more than 30 years. U.S. missionaries routinely spend extended periods in the country, bringing stories of South Sudanese back to their congregations. The legendary “Lost Boys and Girls” of South Sudan, thousands of whom were resettled in the United States, are embedded in communities across the country. South Sudanese diaspora fill the pews in churches from Alexandria to Omaha. And South Sudanese have made their mark on the American sports scene, including recently through Duke University basketball star and projected NBA lottery pick Khaman Maluach (who was playing in the Final Four when the revocation announcement came down). Many of these South Sudanese now have U.S. citizenship and will undoubtedly mobilize fellow Americans to decry Rubio’s announcement.

Suspect Logic

Beyond the potential for a domestic backlash, the purported rationale for the revocation fails even on its own suspect logic. 

To begin with, most South Sudanese – whether on visas in the United States, or located elsewhere in the world, including in South Sudan itself – have little influence over their government’s decision-making regarding the repatriation of nationals or literally anything else. Soon after achieving independence, South Sudan’s leaders, President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar, dragged the country into a brutal civil war, estimated to have cost close to 400,000 lives. A shaky peace agreement paused the fighting in 2018, but because of the war, and slow-rolling by Kiir and the officials around him, the country has never had an election. For some South Sudanese, joining a rebellion, rather than going to the polls, is seen as the primary means to influence the leadership. 

The peace agreement loosely holding the country together is now on the brink of collapse, making this a terrible moment for indiscriminately repatriating citizens. Competition between Kiir and Machar is the central drama in South Sudanese politics, which triggered the first civil war and threatens to do so again. Kiir recently placed Machar under house arrest, after forces historically aligned with Machar attacked army components controlled by Kiir. 

All the while, South Sudanese citizens struggle in some of the most difficult conditions imaginable. The United Nations projects that close to 70 percent of South Sudan’s population of just over 13 million people requires some form of humanitarian assistance, with 6.4 million people classified as severely food-insecure and more than 2 million children under 5 at risk of acute malnutrition. The civil war and other factors have forced approximately 2.3 million South Sudanese to flee to other countries, and displaced 2 million more within the country. At the same time, the civil war in neighboring Sudan has forced more than 640,000 South Sudanese living there to return to South Sudan, placing a further strain on scarce resources. 

South Sudan’s economy, already in shambles, suffered a further blow when a portion of a pipeline carrying South Sudanese oil (the country’s primary revenue source) through Sudan was damaged amidst Sudan’s civil war. The economy also depends on remittances from South Sudanese living abroad, including in the United States. As Kiir has grown increasingly authoritarian, basic rights and freedoms are routinely trampled upon by the South Sudanese government, compelling some South Sudanese to flee the country in search of safety (Freedom House rates South Sudan as a 1 on a 100 point scale, rendering it one of the least free countries in the world).

Temporary Protected Status

The U.S. government itself has understood the extremely difficult conditions in South Sudan for some time, having already granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to South Sudanese. TPS is granted to individuals in the United States “who are unable to return home safely due to conditions or circumstances preventing their country from adequately handling the return.” The designation is made by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the current designation listing South Sudan nationals as eligible for TPS runs until May 3 this year.

There are currently 155 South Sudanese in the United States with TPS, with a further 280 eligible to apply. While there has been no public determination by the secretary of homeland security regarding an extension of TPS for South Sudanese, Rubio’s announcement presumably means DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is planning to terminate their TPS. As of publication, however, no such decision has been published in the Federal Register (compare, for example, Noem’s termination of TPS for Venezuelan nationals, published two months in advance of the expiration date of their status.)

The Trump administration’s rationale for the collective punishment of an entire population on account of their government’s refusal to accept repatriated citizens is hard to fathom. Perhaps the target is influential people around Kiir and in the upper levels of his government, some of whom have U.S. visas themselves, or have family in the United States, and could convince Kiir to reverse course. If so, a more targeted visa ban, as in the Colombia case, could have achieved that outcome. Perhaps the administration thinks that South Sudanese in the country and throughout the diaspora will pressure Kiir to accept returnees – but if Kiir listened to that sort of citizen lobbying, he would have acceded to citizens’ demands for peace over war a long time ago. 

In announcing the visa revocation, Rubio asserted that “it is time for the Transitional Government of South Sudan to stop taking advantage of the United States.” The South Sudanese government is divided and autocratic, but its harms are inflicted primarily on its own people. Moreover, Rubio’s assertion fundamentally distorts the nature of the relationship between the two countries. South Sudanese were able to realize their right to self-determination – and voted to become an independent country – with American support, which was underpinned by domestic lobbying, especially from a robust evangelical coalition. And the United States has benefitted too, through the talent, dynamism, values and determination of the South Sudanese living and working in American communities. Pinning an autocratic government’s decisions on them is illogical, unjust, and ignores the myriad contributions they’ve made.

IMAGE: Sudanese refugees and ethnic South Sudanese who have fled the war in Sudan carry their belongings while boarding a boat at the shores of the White Nile River in the Port of Renk on February 14, 2024. The boats take hundreds of Sudanese refugees and South Sudanese returnees daily to the city of Malakal in a journey that takes days. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the war in Sudan to South Sudan since the conflict exploded in April 2023, according to the United Nations. South Sudan, that itself had recently come out of decades of war, was facing a dire humanitarian situation before the war in Sudan erupted, and it is feared the country does to not have the resources to host displaced people. (Photo by LUIS TATO/AFP via Getty Images)

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As recent commentary, including Ward Ferdinandusse’s detailed analysis on Just Security, has underscored, the ICC’s legal reasoning is undergoing renewed examination, including in the context of ongoing discussions concerning the authority of a potential Special Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression on Ukraine. The discourse now centers not solely on whether international law permits the prosecution of sitting heads of state, but whether the ICC’s approach remains consistent with state behavior and contemporary legal understandings. In this shifting context, it is timely to reflect on whether the ICC’s approach to head-of-state immunity remains sustainable—or whether a thoughtful recalibration could enhance the Court’s effectiveness and credibility.

Reexamination of past precedent would make the Court stronger at a moment when a perceived gap between its claimed authority and the enforceability of its decisions threatens to undermine the broader project of accountability on which the Court stands. There are pathways for the Court to recalibrate its legal reasoning—particularly regarding head-of-state immunity—without abandoning its commitment to justice. By anchoring its decisions more firmly in customary international law and the realities of state cooperation, the ICC can reinforce its credibility, improve compliance with arrest warrants, and foster renewed diplomatic support. At a time when major powers are increasingly skeptical of international institutions, strengthening the Court’s legal coherence is not merely a technical correction—it is a diplomatic necessity for preserving the legitimacy of the international criminal justice system as a whole.

The Limits and Controversy of the Bashir Decision

A reassessment of this issue necessitates revisiting the ICC Appeal Chamber’s judgment in the Bashir case. At the time, the Appeals Chamber held that under customary international law, heads of state do not enjoy immunity before international criminal tribunals—distinguishing them from national courts, where such immunity remains uncontested—, including, in the Chamber’s view, the ICC. This decision marked a significant assertion of international criminal accountability but also provoked robust debate. As Ferdinandusse observed, the ruling was the subject of extensive analysis and critique, with even many supporters acknowledging ambiguities in its reasoning (see e.g. here (D. Akande), here (D. Jacobs), here (B. Batros)).

Critiques of the decision are multifaceted. They include the Appeals Chamber’s misreading of the International Court of Justice’s Arrest Warrant case, its selective interpretation of relevant Security Council resolutions, and its seeming disregard for extensive contrary state practice. Further, instead of a single, cohesive judgment, the decision was accompanied by a separate opinion from four (of five) judges and a Court-issued Q&A document that appeared to introduce additional or even contradictory reasoning and whose authorship remains unclear.

Perhaps most important, as Ferdinandusse chronicles, is the mounting evidence in the years since the decision—from states across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas—that undercuts the notion that there exists widespread state practice and opinio juris supporting the Court’s position. Rather than demonstrating a clear customary norm, the behavior of states suggests that head-of-state immunity remains a deeply embedded feature of international legal relations, or at minimum one where state practice is more fragmented vice widespread.

A central concern with the Bashir decision lies not only in its specific legal conclusions but in the broader methodological approach it reflects—one that has become increasingly prevalent in the field of international criminal law. At the heart of the issue is a recurring tendency, observed among both international jurists and academic commentators, to treat prior judicial decisions—particularly those of international or hybrid tribunals—as primary evidence of customary international law. This approach, while understandable given the limited availability of other sources, risks conflating judicial reasoning with state-driven legal development.

Customary international law, by definition, derives from two elements: state practice and opinio juris—the belief that such practice is carried out as a matter of legal obligation. Accurately identifying a customary norm requires a rigorous empirical analysis of how states behave and what they expressly regard as legal duties. However, in the field of international criminal law, there has been a discernible drift toward relying on the jurisprudence of prior courts as a proxy for this empirical analysis. While international judicial opinions can offer persuasive insights and shape normative expectations, they are not a substitute for the evidence of actual state conduct and belief.

The Bashir ruling exemplifies this tendency. Rather than undertaking a comprehensive survey of state practice and opinio juris across relevant jurisdictions, the Appeals Chamber leaned heavily on the jurisprudence of earlier tribunals—such as the SCSL, ICTY, ICTR, and even the post-World War II trials (see joint concurring opinion, cited in the main judgment)—to assert the non-applicability of head-of-state immunity before international courts. These decisions, while important, reflect the reasoning of judicial bodies rather than the broader consensus or consistent behavior of states. Moreover, none of these tribunals undertook a systematic methodology to establish customary international law through an analysis of both state practice and opinio juris, particularly on the precise matter at issue in the Bashir decision concerning head of state immunity. As a result, the ruling presents a doctrinal assertion that may lack sufficient grounding in the two elements necessary to constitute customary international law.

This methodological pattern has persisted in much of the subsequent defense of the Bashir decision. Prominent scholars such as Leila Sadat and former ICC judge Chile Eboe-Osuji (also an author of the Bashir decision) have pointed to prior tribunal jurisprudence as central to their justifications for the ICC’s stance. While these perspectives offer principled arguments in favor of accountability, they often mirror the same evidentiary shortcomings—emphasizing legal reasoning over empirical state behavior.

Legal Fragmentation and the Risk to the ICC’s Authority

Beyond the core legal questions surrounding immunity, more systemic concerns loom in the ICC’s approach. First is the risk of fragmentation in the international legal order. Regional bodies, such as the African Union and the Arab League, have long expressed apprehension over what they perceive as the uneven application of international criminal law—particularly when prosecutions appear to disproportionately target leaders from the so-called “Global South”. These critiques reflect not only regional grievances but also deeper questions of legitimacy, equity, and the potential politicization of justice.

Recent prosecutorial decisions have only intensified this scrutiny. The issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, following similar action against Russian President Vladimir Putin, has prompted speculation that the Court is attempting to demonstrate balance in response to longstanding accusations of selective justice. While the legal basis for each case must be assessed on its own merits—and the decisions may be justified by the unprecedented nature of both conflicts—, the sequencing and political context of these decisions raise broader perception challenges: namely, whether the Court is acting out of legal necessity or in response to pressures on its institutional legitimacy, and whether Prosecutor Khan’s charging decisions are guided more by legal principle or political calculation.

These perceptions feed into a more troubling trend: the erosion of respect for the Court’s authority. Some states have openly defied ICC decisions with minimal consequence. For example, Mongolia’s decision not to arrest Putin during his visit was met with little more than symbolic criticism by the Assembly of State Parties (ASP). Such instances, though often justified on legal or political grounds, send a collective signal that the Court’s authority can be disregarded without meaningful repercussions. Overall, reactions to ICC arrest warrants—especially those targeting high-level officials—reflect a fragmented landscape. While some states have affirmed their commitment to cooperation, others have either remained silent or publicly opposed the Court’s actions, often invoking competing interpretations of immunity or political sensitivities. This split underscores not only the legal complexity surrounding these issues but also the broader challenges the ICC faces in securing consistent, principled support from the international community.

The Dangerous Gap Between Claimed Authority and Enforceability

This institutional dilemma was sharply illustrated in a recent exchange between legal scholars Mark Freeman and Mark Drumbl. Freeman observed that the ICC’s most significant existential threat may not come from external political opposition, but from within—through a slow erosion of credibility when its decisions lack enforcement. Drumbl echoed this concern, cautioning that when the Court advances legal positions that outpace international consensus or extend beyond accepted doctrine, it risks both political backlash and doctrinal marginalization.

Their exchange underscores a fundamental point: the problem is not ambition, but disconnection. The ICC’s pursuit of accountability must remain principled, but it also must remain grounded in legal clarity and practical enforceability. When the Court asserts far-reaching legal interpretations without securing the political or doctrinal support necessary to implement them, it undermines the very authority it seeks to project. The risk is that the Court becomes mired in pronouncements in search of enforcement, where symbolic action substitutes for actual accountability.

This tension lies at the heart of the ICC’s mandate. The Court may declare that head-of-state immunity does not apply before international tribunals, but such assertions are only effective if states are willing to act on them. The danger is not isolated noncompliance—it is the normalization of disregard. As more states openly question the Court’s legitimacy or refuse to cooperate, future enforcement becomes even more elusive.

This dynamic echoes the enduring insight from Marbury v. Madison, where Chief Justice John Marshall cautioned that a legal ruling without the means of enforcement is little more than a declaration without power. The ICC faces a similar dilemma today. In some respects, it may have attempted to assert its own Marbury moment prematurely—staking a bold legal claim without the institutional or political foundation necessary to support it. The Court’s future effectiveness will hinge not only on the strength of its legal convictions, but on its ability to translate those convictions into outcomes that resonate beyond the page. If that gap between authority and enforceability remains unaddressed, the ICC risks weakening the very justice it was created to uphold.

Structural constraints of the ICC itself compound this challenge. Unlike domestic courts, the ICC operates without a centralized enforcement mechanism and depends almost entirely on the voluntary cooperation of states. This reliance leaves the Court vulnerable to political resistance—particularly when states view its actions as exceeding legal bounds or lacking consistency. In such cases, states may simply decline to enforce arrest warrants or publicly reject the Court’s jurisdiction, further straining its credibility.

Pathways for Reconciliation: Strengthening Legal and Political Alignment

This is not a call for retreat, but for recalibration. The ICC must strive to align its legal interpretations with rigorous analysis of evolving state practice and a realistic assessment of political conditions. International justice requires both normative strength and institutional credibility.

One constructive avenue would be to foster enhanced dialogue among states through the ASP, including the creation of a dedicated working group to examine contemporary state practice and develop clearer guidance on head-of-state immunity. Such a process could help promote greater legal coherence and shared expectations among member states. Crucially, it would also reaffirm the role of states as the primary architects of the Court’s legal framework—ensuring that the development of key norms remains anchored in the ASP’s legislative mandate, rather than being shaped exclusively through judicial interpretation.

Another potential avenue is closer engagement with the United Nations Security Council. While the ICC has historically maintained its independence from political bodies, strategic collaboration with the Security Council—particularly when issuing arrest warrants for sitting heads of state—could provide additional legal clarity and enforcement mechanisms. Security Council resolutions explicitly removing immunity could help bridge the gap between legal theory and state practice. Some may argue that involving the Security Council risks politicizing the Court’s mandate. However, this engagement can also serve to ground the Court’s actions within the framework of global political realities, ensuring that there is sufficient international backing for enforcement. In contexts where state cooperation is often elusive, Security Council involvement can lend critical political weight and legitimacy to ICC decisions, increasing the likelihood of compliance and reinforcing the Court’s authority on the global stage.

Furthermore, the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) could adopt a more pragmatic strategy by prioritizing cases with a higher likelihood of enforcement. Prosecutor Karim Khan has previously emphasized the importance of securing arrests to maintain the Court’s credibility (despite seemingly departing from that campaign promise). Ensuring that the ICC’s efforts result in tangible legal consequences, rather than unexecuted warrants, would strengthen both its legitimacy and deterrent effect.

Finally, the Court itself should recognize the flexibility within its institutional structure to correct course. There is no rule that precludes an Appeals Chamber of the ICC from departing from a prior Appeals Chamber decision. As many readers will know, the ICC does not operate under a doctrine of stare decisis. While precedent can play a persuasive role, it does not bind future panels of judges in different cases. Historically, the Court has often comported with earlier rulings for the sake of consistency, but it retains the institutional discretion to deviate when legal or factual circumstances demand reassessment. Revisiting the Bashir precedent through a new Appeals Chamber decision would not violate the Court’s procedures—it would demonstrate its willingness to evolve in light of shifting legal realities and state practice.

A decision to reverse the Bashir precedent would undeniably carry significant practical and political consequences. It would cast uncertainty over existing arrest warrants against sitting heads of state, potentially undermining the legal basis on which they were issued. Such a move would likely be welcomed by some states that have long been critical of the Court’s approach to immunity—but deeply unpopular among others, especially those that have supported the ICC’s efforts to hold powerful leaders accountable. Most notably, it risks alienating victim communities who view these warrants as a vital recognition of their suffering and a rare act of international accountability.

These concerns deserve serious consideration. Reversal must not be seen as a retreat from justice or a concession to political expediency. Rather, it should be framed as a principled recalibration—an effort to bring the Court’s jurisprudence into closer alignment with customary international law and to reinforce the legitimacy of future prosecutions. Upholding flawed legal reasoning for fear of political fallout risks weakening, rather than preserving, the Court’s authority. Victim communities are best served by a Court that commands credibility, even if doing so requires difficult institutional self-correction. In the long term, the ICC’s moral and legal authority depends not on symbolic gestures, but on the integrity and coherence of its legal foundations. Indeed, as observers of international criminal trials know well, the trajectory of international criminal justice is rarely linear. The recent arrest and extradition of Rodrigo Duterte is a case in point: while the path to accountability may be slow and contested, the eventual engagement of legal institutions reflects the enduring force of justice.

Critics may also claim that a reversal would be seen as capitulating to political pressure. But it is precisely the opposite. A decision to reverse course—made transparently, based on sound legal analysis, and rooted in an honest assessment of the law and state practice—demonstrates the Court’s independence. Capitulation would mean clinging to a position that is no longer legally defensible, for fear of political optics. A principled adjustment, on the other hand, signals maturity and integrity.

A Critical Moment for the Future of International Justice

The ICC stands at a crossroads. As recent state reactions demonstrate, the Court’s stance on head-of-state immunity is far from universally accepted, and its ability to enforce arrest warrants against sitting heads of state remains in question. While the principles underlying the Bashir decision remain compelling, the practical realities of state practice and enforcement necessitate a reassessment of the ICC’s legal framework.

Reconsidering the Court’s position does not entail abandoning the cause of justice. On the contrary, it reflects a commitment to ensuring that international criminal accountability is pursued on a foundation that is both legally sound and institutionally resilient. By engaging openly with states, clarifying legal principles, and aligning its strategies with enforceable outcomes, the ICC can continue to uphold its mission while adapting to the complex environment in which it operates.

Such a recalibration would not signal weakness, but strength—a willingness to evolve, to listen, and to lead with integrity in the service of justice.

IMAGE: (From L) Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut of France, Presiding judge Cuno Tarfusser of Italy and judge Chang-ho Chung of Korea run the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, on July 6, 2017. Judges delivered a decision in the case against Sudan’s president Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir who was indicted by the ICC in 2009 and 2010. (Photo by EVERT ELZINGA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

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The tools available to human rights researchers have expanded dramatically over the past 20 years, enabling greater remote investigative powers than ever before. Analysts in distant locations working independently, in loose collectives or for formal NGOs, can now parse social media feeds, analyze satellite imagery, and examine geographical data that were once the preserve of government intelligence agencies.

As these technologies have become more readily available to a wider variety of actors, funders and governments have increasingly directed resources toward open-source investigation (OSINT) efforts, which can be launched rapidly as crises unfold and redeployed as situations change. Yet, this focus often comes at the expense of building local community networks that can provide a more varied dataset gained from proximity, lived experience, and local knowledge. Whereas OSINT efforts can be stood up immediately, such networks must be developed well before peak information demand. This process requires longer lead times and sustained financial and personnel resourcing that often stretches beyond the short-term (and frequently reactive) institutional funding timelines for crisis response.

Despite OSINT’s potential, the vast and ever-growing volume of open-source data and advanced information-gathering tools available today have yet to translate into real-world gains for atrocity prevention. The challenge is partly one of scale. As Human Rights Watch Washington Director Sarah Yager noted in 2023, “The sheer amount of information out there makes spotting a human rights problem solely through open-source intelligence a Sisyphean task.”

It is also one of capacity and process. Human rights activists from Sudan and Myanmar have testified to the U.K. Parliament that the government could – and should – have foreseen the atrocities unfolding in their countries if officials had engaged with a broader range of communities and pieced together disparate available data streams. However, the financial, personnel, and analytical resources required to collect, process, and interpret this data were lacking. As the UK Atrocity Prevention Working Group has noted, the problem is not that governments and organizations don’t have enough data, but that they fail to recognize, aggregate, analyze, and integrate it effectively into policymaking.

By definition, OSINT is readily accessible and publicly available information – but what enters the public domain remains shaped by existing power, privilege, and capacity dynamics. While today’s information environment is more democratic than ever, OSINT alone rarely provides the actionable information needed for effective atrocity prevention. Institutional funders should acknowledge this shortcoming and invest in a more diverse, multi-pronged approach to data gathering – whether by supporting partnerships or fostering coalitions – ideally substantively led by affected community members. Doing so would enable the timely and informed policy action urgently needed.

OSINT Isn’t Neutral

The Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open-Source Investigations defines OSINT as “publicly available information that any member of the public can observe, purchase or request without requiring special legal status or unauthorized access.” Specifically, it defines digital open-source information as publicly available information in digital format, including content posted on social media platforms, documents, images, videos and audio recordings shared online, satellite imagery, and government-published data.

A key reason why OSINT alone falls short as an early warning information source is that it’s not a neutral dataset. About one-third of the world’s population still lacks internet access , with the majority residing in South and East Asia and Africa – regions where many countries face an increased risk of mass killing. These areas are often virtually absent from the digital map, limiting the availability of detailed street-level imagery and making it harder for OSINT investigators to verify videos, photos, or satellite imagery. For instance, when researchers at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center sought to corroborate the location of alleged abuses for a report on gender persecution in Iran, they struggled with limited street-level imagery and ultimately relied on online images searches. Compounding this challenge are disparities in internet usability for speakers of lesser-known or historically underrepresented languages. In a world of more than 7,000 languages, more than 75 percent of users access the internet in just 10 languages, further limiting the accessibility of OSINT data and tools.

Another major limitation of OSINT for early warning is that media and information environments vary widely across the world, with the ability to freely share information depending on basic rights and infrastructure that are not universal. The stark contrast between the abundance of data on Ukraine compared with the paucity of information on Ethiopia underscores this asymmetry – while some contexts have an abundance of open-source data, while others remain severely under-documented.

This disparity has real-world policy consequences. For example, in testimony before the U.K. Parliament, Sudanese activists noted as early as summer 2023 that the looming crisis in El Geneina in West Darfur was being overlooked due to a lack of internet and telephone infrastructure, whereas events in the capital, Khartoum, received far greater attention and acknowledgment.

Counterbalancing OSINT’s Asymmetry

The uneven availability of open-source information means it must be combined with other documentation strategies, tools, and datasets to serve effectively as an early warning alarm. Institutional funders, OSINT investigators, and tool developers should take proactive steps to address these gaps by expanding data redundancy, prioritizing local context, and promoting equitable partnerships.

The following four concrete actions – two for international OSINT investigators, one for software and tool developers, and one for funders – can help counterbalance OSINT’s inherent asymmetry:

International OSINT Investigators: Build in Redundancy

To maximize the effectiveness of open-source intelligence, international OSINT investigators should build redundancy into their documentation strategies by drawing from multiple, overlapping sources of information. There are more ways than ever to document and collect data on human rights violations, making it easier to generate and share critical information. From social media posts by eyewitnesses or perpetrators to satellite imagery, open-source researchers can gather information from a range of sources and tools.

This collection of tools, or “documentation stack,” is similar to the tech sector’s concept of a “tech stack” – a suite of tools, platforms, software, and apps a company uses to carry out its operations and track its performance. A documentation stack consists of resources, tools, software, and platforms that analysts and organizations use to gather data on human rights abuses. With the advent of social media and decreasing costs of technology, this stack has expanded to include testimony, physical documents, videos, images, satellite imagery, surveys, reporting, geolocation tools, sensors, and physical and digital forensic tools. The more tools included in the stack, the greater the redundancy within the human rights information-gathering ecosystem – making it harder to suppress, distort, or ignore concerns about potential atrocities.

For example, if a government shuts down the internet around an election, local monitoring networks can still document events on the ground, while satellite imagery can produce real-time visual records. If satellite imagery is too costly or lacks the necessary degree of granularity, surveys and interviews conducted by journalists, humanitarian actors, or community groups can help fill in information gaps, providing insights into displacement patterns or rising ethnic tensions.

Beyond closing data gaps, redundancy strengthens the resilience and credibility of open-source information, making it harder for detractors to undermine the truth. By combining multiple data streams, OSINT analysts and organizations can fortify information against attack, denial, or competing narratives. The more tools available to verify information, the greater the weight of that information and analyses that rely on it.

For instance, to investigate an April 2022 cluster munitions attack on the Kramatorsk rail station in eastern Ukraine, visual investigations practice SITU Research and Human Rights Watch combined witness testimony, data on munition performance, satellite imagery, and video documentation. The assault had killed at least 58 people and injured more than 100, many of them civilians. The resulting findings helped generate evidence contradicting Russia’s denial of responsibility and indicating possible war crimes.

International OSINT Investigators: Prioritize Local Context

In addition to building in redundancy, international OSINT investigators should elevate local context in both data collection and analysis. OSINT enables analysts – whether working independently or as a part of formal or informal collectives – o gather individual pieces of data, much like gathering scattered puzzle pieces. However, for these individual data points form a meaningful picture, they must be connected and contextualized. This is a strength of the documentation stack: combining diverse types of data, analysis, and sources to provide greater clarity and insight.

Yet analyzing gathered information, particularly for early warning signs, is no simple feat. While open-source investigations are often imagined as conducted far from the ground, effectively sifting through data gathered requires deep contextual knowledge, including of local languages, subtext, jargon, and cultural shorthand. Often, small and seemingly insignificant events can signal larger atrocities on the horizon. Understanding which small signals are important or insignificant requires a robust grasp of local context and situational dynamics. This is particularly true in situations where analysts must detect and interpret small, seemingly unconnected indicators rather than a single violent act or specific pattern of events.

Just as foreign correspondents have long relied on the situational awareness of local journalists to enhance the substance and accuracy of their reporting, OSINT teams should incorporate insights from affected communities and others with relevant lived experience. This can take several forms, including hiring community members on international OSINT teams, building collaborative partnerships, or providing OSINT training and support to existing local NGO or activist networks. While a growing number of multi-disciplinary OSINT teams – such as the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab – are hiring analysts with lived experience or deep knowledge of local dynamics, full and reciprocal partnerships between locally-led groups and internationally-based OSINT teams are the exception rather than the norm.

At the same time, international OSINT practitioners must take care not to reinforce power dynamics between themselves and local sources. Respecting and prioritizing local knowledge not only saves valuable time and resources – which would otherwise be spent on training outsiders to understand the context – but is also as mission-critical as technical OSINT expertise. As such, the provision of local knowledge and information should be compensated with appropriate credit (as security conditions allow) and funding. This happens far too infrequently, and should become a standard practice.

Social Media Companies and Tool Developers: Create Equitable Data Access Policies    

When it comes to the private sector, social media companies and tool developers should create more equitable data access policies and pricing structures accessible to the full range of OSINT researchers and analysts. Previously, a variety of tools were easily accessible to mine data from social media platforms and the internet. For instance, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) enabled researchers globally to analyze social media content to corroborate allegations of human rights abuses and track atrocity early warning signs.

However, access to APIs has become either increasingly expensive and narrow, or restricted altogether – such as X’s API, which went from being freely available to exorbitantly costly in April 2023, or Facebook’s CrowdTangle, which was shut down in August 2024.  Of those APIs that remain available, many are either paywalled or geographically restricted – for instance, access to TikTok’s API is limited to researchers located in the United States and Europe.

These deepening restrictions pose a significant entry barrier for OSINT investigative teams, independent  non-American or European analysts, and locally-led initiatives in volatile regions. As Thraets Research Lead Richard Ngamita notes, such barriers make “…it exponentially difficult for global south researchers to study misinformation and disinformation crises,” locking out many independent actors in the global south who rely on open source data to monitor and analyze social media developments.

Funders: Incentivize Cross-Organizational Collaboration

Lastly, international funders – including governments, international organizations, foundations, and private donors – should incentivize collaboration across organizations and sectors. Strengthening OSINT analysis through diverse data streams, elevating local knowledge without being extractive, securing API access, and advocating for fairer API policies all require significant resources. However, not all OSINT teams can excel in all these areas. Given the constrained funding landscape for human rights investigations and atrocity prevention, organizations often stretch beyond core capabilities to secure funding – an approach that is neither sustainable nor efficient in the long run.

Many organizations and teams specialize in specific aspects of the multi-pronged documentation and investigative strategy proposed. To harness these strengths, funders should incentivize collaborations that leverage each organization’s unique expertise. Supporting partnerships among analyst teams and organizations can foster sustained, multi-pronged investigative efforts that merge the distinct capabilities of various OSINT actors. While such collaborations are rare, they do exist—examples include the Investigative Commons, a Berlin-based collective of investigators, reporters, lawyers, and artists collaborating on targeted investigations, and Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps, a network of universities partnering with Amnesty to collect and verify digital content.

Crucially, funders and organizations often underestimate the complexities of integrating OSINT expertise across geographies. Successful collaborations require clear, reciprocal benefits, a shared mission, and strong trust among participants, along with dedicated management capacity. These elements are not developed overnight, and require consistent, thoughtful engagement among collaborators. To facilitate this, funders should allocate specific resources for grantees to explore, establish, and strengthen collaborative efforts.

Conclusion

While new and emerging open-source tools offer exciting possibilities, OSINT investigative teams should integrate them as part of broader, multi-pronged documentation stack – one that is supported at all levels by local knowledge and insights. To effectively identify early warning signs of atrocities, international OSINT teams must incorporate situational expertise that helps decode complex, often-hidden indicators of escalating violence.

More broadly, the atrocity investigation ecosystem must shift toward a more sustainable, collaborative model that prioritizes local expertise and cross-organizational cooperation. Strengthening such partnerships will lead to more comprehensive early warning and documentation efforts — something funders should recognize and prioritize. As the funding landscape become increasingly constrained and atrocity dynamics grow ever more complex, harnessing collective expertise, diverse sources, and integrated data streams offers the best path forward toward building a stronger, more effective system for investigating and documenting the most serious international crimes.

IMAGE: People walk among scattered objects in the market of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, as fighting continued in Sudan between the forces of two rival generals, on April 29, 2023. At least 96 people were reported to have been killed in El Geneina that week, the UN said, as fierce fighting between Sudan’s army and paramilitaries entered a third week, violating a renewed truce. (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

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To be more specific, Western leaders, and particularly those in the United States, have not developed a successful strategy for leveraging sanctions to negotiate major concessions that end hostilities. Nor have they constructed a toolkit for how to provide timely sanctions reduction that would clarify, incentivize, or reciprocate such concessions. At best, leaders often lament that it is always easier to impose sanctions than to adapt or terminate them in a ripe-for-resolution crisis negotiation.

An adaptive, serious schematic for aiding the transition of a devastated sanctioned economy to a functioning one without sanctions is as critical a step for ending hostilities as de-mining operations, reciprocally reducing frontline troop numbers, and the complete exchange of prisoners. Failure to develop scenarios and actions that produce sanctions-leveraged agreements with the targets of those penalties is both irresponsible to the millions of innocents suffering from sanctions but also risks adding a poison pill to any ceasefire deal at conception. It may even prevent a final peace deal from being signed. In fact, the tools for potential success in reducing sanctions exist; they just need to be heeded by the sanctions-imposing entities’ policymakers and political leaders involved.

During the past 10 years, there have been at least three clear cases of failed sanctions relief in similar circumstances of opportune political compromise as today’s Syria situation: Iran (2016-2018), Colombia (since 2016), and Sudan (2017-2021). In the case of Iran, one of us (Stephen) witnessed the immense struggle the United States and its allies faced trying to deliver sanctions relief after 2016 and how lingering sanctions eroded confidence and good faith between parties. This weakening set the stage for President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018.

In Colombia and Sudan, private actors were reluctant to pursue new business ventures while any government sanctions remained. Similarly, U.S. and Venezuelan negotiations appeared to have agreed which sanctions reduction would produce which specific changes in Maduro’s conduct of the 2024 national election, but when Venezuela failed to deliver some of these changes, the United States reinstated the sanctions, and Maduro falsified the election results to remain in power. So again the economic quagmire remains: Sanctions become the policy rather than the tool of a policy of crisis resolution.

Sanctions Relief and Adaptation Have Been Too Slow and Uncoordinated

The Jan. 27 meeting of the European Union on Syrian sanctions reduction prompted optimism that a roadmap would soon be forthcoming. Yet beyond some loosening of restrictions affecting the energy sector and enabling some emergency humanitarian relief, the ministers appeared to struggle with “technical issues” and debate a “snap back” of sanctions if needed. But in a significant move on Monday, European Union countries suspended a range of sanctions against Syria with immediate effect, including restrictions related to energy, banking, transport and reconstruction.

To its credit, the Biden administration was quick to issue General License 24 for Syria in early January, permitting economic transactions in the energy sector and with official Syrian government institutions. But it expires on July 7. The Trump Administration, which stated early that ‘Syria wasn’t our fight’, now appears to have shifted to full uncertainty about its policy direction. U.S. inaction, even on extending GL 24, becomes even more problematic and irresponsible as it may undercut Europe’s efforts unless issues of U.S. secondary sanctions jeopardy are quickly addressed.

These Western discussions and uncoordinated sanctions relief in the humanitarian sector unfold almost three months after the fall of the Assad regime. While the prospect of a post-Assad Syria prompts optimism, now is the time for cooperative action that produces tangible relief. Otherwise, as argued recently by seasoned analysts, the West will make the same mistakes of sanctions reduction timidity and slow direct diplomatic engagement that it did with Afghanistan in 2021.

Why a Working Playbook for Sanctions Relief Is So Difficult

A significant blockage to effective action is the West’s inability to sort through the different views held by various sanctions targets of what constitutes sanctions relief. One of the first requests to the international community from the new, interim Syrian government led by the armed group that toppled Bashar al-Assad, Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was sanctions relief in the energy, telecoms, roads and airports, education and healthcare sectors, to meet the basic needs of its citizens. Leading a country devastated from 14 years of war, HTS envisioned a coordinated, rather massive and immediate response, largely because the dictator had fled and a new, however imperfect Syrian order was unfolding. But Western cautions and lack of plans for the intricacies of reversing sanctions jeopardize peace and progress in Syria, and further destabilization in the region.

Sanctions relief has been directly stated last week by Russia in its summit with the U.S. Russia views Western sanctions as a long-term economic containment strategy to box it in, not a nimble policy tool. This has fueled Russia’s pivot to alternative trade partnerships and economic models like the 10-country BRICS group of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. These States increasingly coalesce into a parallel economic system that is immune from Western pressure. Furthermore, Russia’s relationship and transactions with Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and Syria under Assad has led them to be labeled “the axis of the sanctioned.”  To deal with this collective demands a well-conceived and implementable plan.

Additionally, experience with the outcomes of political decisions to reduce or remove sanctions shows that they often naively assume that a market-based economic and business resurgence will miraculously appear. But when the free market is forced into a position of hard de-coupling and de-risking for several years, it does not return to its pre-sanctions or pre-war position. It opts instead for a recalcitrant “wait and see” approach, hedging against the risk of further political shifts when what is needed is an “act and see” strategy in which business and investors sense at least enough economic stability to resume at least some degree of risk-taking.

This vexes policymakers since they consider the market as the same medium they rely on for delivering relief from economic pressure. Without solving this conundrum, there remains a significant likelihood that gradual sanctions relief without incentives for the market to return to risk-taking will lead to political conflicts. And without any sanctions relief, there will be no binding armistice or enduring peace, neither in these days of Syrian transition nor in an end of the Ukraine-Russia War.

Finally, a major mental block manifest by sanctions imposers continues to be their approach to sanctions reduction and relief discussions as if they engaged in an arms control negotiation. The former is an asymmetric confrontation, the latter seeks a trade-off bargain between equals.  With sanctions, deep bruising of the target remains, especially from regional and global financial institutions, long after these economic weapons are formally decommissioned. Moreover, sanctions-imposing  governments and their diverse departments with different sanctions jurisdictions — financial, counterterrorism, trade, and political — assume unravelling these overlapping restrictions will occur in a logical and timely fashion. Recent cases prove otherwise.

The Opening for Meaningful Action is Slipping Away

To operationalize sanctions relief effectively, Western diplomats must engage the real-world recommendations from sanctions experts and prioritize the policy groundwork for sanctions reduction. A serious toolkit exists for delivering humanitarian relief when sanctions are in place. That provides a model for a possible toolkit for sanctions reduction in emergency recovery and for the resumption – or start —  of economic exchanges. This sanctions relief toolkit must include establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for sanctions relief to define and track the target State’s compliance and progress with whatever political deals about target behavior are forged. These KPIs must define clear snap-back provisions to address violations, while simultaneously addressing private-sector hesitancy through regulatory assurances.

Such steps would ensure credibility and reduce uncertainty for all engaged parties. Diplomats must design a sanctions relief roadmap that incentivizes early and substantial re-engagement by humanitarian organizations and then by financial institutions whenever a new political opportunity for ceasefire or peace presents itself. Without such preparation, market actors will remain cautious, preventing economic recovery, and undermining long-term peace efforts.

As the rapid end to the Assad regime illustrates, and as sudden U.S.-Russian meetings on Ukraine have thrown allies of the United States and Ukraine into a scramble, Western nations are now in the last minute of new political openings and peace negotiations with no sanctions plan. They must urgently formulate negotiation strategies and the master technical mechanics for the immensely complex suspension or termination of the multiple restrictions on the work of humanitarian organizations, as well as on commercial trade, finance, and development assistance.

IMAGE: Newborns receive oxygen at Damascus Hospital on January 28, 2025 in Damascus, Syria. After 14 years of civil war, Syria’s healthcare system is both economically and technically strained. Following the overthrow of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad by opposition groups in a quick offensive on December 8, the country is looking to gain economic momentum after years of global sanctions on the Assad-led government. Arab and Western countries have been reopening diplomatic relations with Syria’s new de facto authorities, headed by the Islamist former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS. Fourteen years of war have left the Syrian economy damaged, with tens of thousands of residents living on or below the poverty line. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

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The RSF’s roots stem from the previous conflict in Darfur, and its current war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) may well turn on which side can control the region, including the key city of Al-Fashir. The city is strategically important and represents the crux of the country’s larger conflict, with ambitions of local actors in Darfur and national interests of the warring sides intertwined. Hence victory by either side would largely determine the outcome of the war in the region and Sudan more broadly.

The Spread of Conflict Beyond Khartoum

When war erupted between the SAF and the RSF in April 2023, many in the country thought or hoped that the violence would remain contained to Sudan’s capital and traditional powerhouse, Khartoum. Those hopes, however, quickly ended with a devastating war engulfing the entire nation – Sudanese are experiencing the worst famine in the nation’s recent history, over 30 million people require humanitarian assistance, and tens of thousands have been killed.

While post-independence Sudan has witnessed several civil wars and military coups, the country’s newest war represents a shift of paradigm in terms of nature, magnitude, and the actors involved. First, it unusually broke out in Khartoum, which had largely remained impregnable from military attacks apart from the incursion by the former rebel group the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in May 2008. Second, the fighting broke out from within the government security forces with the RSF seeking to dismantle the same security sector and political establishment that brought it to existence.

Third, this conflict is connected to Darfur where the RSF was crafted by the former regime as a counterinsurgency tool to quell the rebellion that broke out in 2003.

Alliance of Convenience: The Impact of Darfur’s Unfinished War

Being ravaged by two decades of bloodshed and insecurity, the Darfur factor in the ongoing war is hugely significant. The region is witnessing a blend of tumultuous dynamics linked to the past legacy of violence and the current conflict. Due to Darfur’s unique status as historically conflict-hit region, partly fueled by local imbalances such as land control and power dynamics, the motives of its actors who are engaged in the ongoing fighting may surpass the primary aim of power control in Khartoum as envisaged by the main conflict parties (SAF and RSF) who instigated the war in the first place.

At the onset of the war, the former Darfur rebels (Sudan Liberation Movement, led by the Governor of Darfur, Minni Minawi, and the Sudan Revolutionary Front, which included the Justice and Equality Movement) who joined the Transitional Government of former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok – following a peace deal in 2020, felt little sympathy with either party to the conflict. Hence, they took a neutral stance. Above all, both the SAF and RSF were their erstwhile foes who fought them bitterly for almost two decades in Darfur and beyond. Through the mobilization of the notorious Janjaweed militia fighters, which later morphed into the RSF, the regime of former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir applied a scorched earth policy depopulating large portion of lands traditionally owned by indigenous groups who were displaced into internally displaced persons (IDP) and refugee camps. For instance, according to United Nations reports, in 2007 al-Bashir’s government supported efforts by thousands of nomadic settlers from Sudan’s neighboring countries to occupy empty lands belonging to indigenous groups.

Over a decade ago, I investigated with others the impact of illegal settlements and land occupation on communities which the al-Bashir’s regime perceived as disloyal or harboring insurgents. The long policy of empowering certain ethnic groups from which the bulk of RSF fighters originate made it inherently impossible for the displaced persons to safely return to their original lands. The new owners, who reportedly came from countries such as Niger and Chad were allegedly awarded Sudanese citizenship and given the opportunity to legally register the lands they had acquired through government approval in certain areas. A sizable number of these settlers took custody of fertile agricultural lands in places such as Wadi Salih province in Central Darfur and Wadi Azoum in West Darfur. This trend has intensified over the years with more aggressive State intervention to sabotage land ownership rights in line with the RSF’s rise to power as a key State actor.

The driving factors of the current fighting in Darfur, including the fierce battles over control of the region’s historical capital city of Al-Fashir, are largely catalyzed by the old abominations of the Darfur conflict. Land ownership and local power structures and power balance are at the core of this. In a recent development, the RSF announced the establishment of a “new emirate” in Central Darfur State which is a settlement for a nomadic clan named Awlad Baraka wa-Mubarak who reportedly crossed the border into Sudan from the Central African Republic (CAR). Darfur’s largest ethnic group, the Fur, from which the name of the region is derived, condemned in a statement what it called “a blatant attempt to bring about demographic changes aimed at empowering foreign groups at the expense of the indigenous population.” The areas of the newly declared ‘’emirate’’ – including Wadi Saleh, Qarsila, Arawala, Bundisi, Deleij, and Mukjar – were mentioned as locations of ethnic attacks in the International Criminal Court’s indictment in the ongoing trial of former Janjaweed commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb.

When RSF forces overran government military bases and took control of four main cities in Darfur by October 2023, former Darfur rebels viewed the developments with outrage and distrust of the RSF’s ultimate goals. In their view, absolute control of power by the RSF in Sudan would not only entrench the disastrous policies of the old al-Bashir regime in Darfur, but further dictate new realities that could irreversibly seal the region’s fate. The distrust grew further with the rapid circulation of the narratives of the war, including reports that the RSF is seeking to control and rule Darfur as a separate entity, especially if it fails to control the rest of the country. The presumptions also include the creation of two de facto states in Sudan, one in the east and one in the west of the country, somehow akin to the status quo in neighboring Libya. Since 2014, Libya has been split in two opposing governments, one is located in Tripoli in the west of the country backed by the U.N. (the Government of National Unity), and a rival authority in Tobruk in the east, known as the House of Representatives.

Driven by these fears and own ambitions, in November 2023, the former rebel groups of the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement abandoned their neutrality and declared active involvementin military operations in alliance with the SAF against the RSF. It is worth noting that these two rebel groups and other factions who signed the Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) in October 2020 had already set up a joint military unit called the Joint Darfur Forces (JDF) to protect civilians following a surge of militia attacks against IDPs across the region. The JDF kept Al-Fashir as their headquarters, creating a buffer zone between the warring sides (SAF and RSF) in the initial phase of the conflict. Their primary was confined to protecting civilians, securing humanitarian aid convoys and maintaining law and order in the city which hosts over two million IDPs, including those who from elsewhere across the region.

Fighting to Control Al-Fashir

Al-Fashir is strategically important in many aspects. First, it was the historical capital of the Sultanate of Darfur in the eighteenth century, serving as an economic hub through caravan routes linking Darfur to Libya, the River Nile, Egypt, Chad, and the wider Sahel region. Second, the city is contiguous with seven Sudanese states, with road travel to four of them, including the capital, Khartoum. Since the beginning of the Darfur conflict in 2003, the city has become the center for international relief efforts and subsequently hosted the headquarters of the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), the largest peacekeeping operation of its kind.

The tipping point that sparked the fighting between the RSF and the JDF came in April 2024, when the former took control of the strategic town of Mellit, northeast of Al-Fashir, which links North Darfur to Libya. Through this move, the RSF effectively cut off the vital supply line between Al-Fashir and Libya through Mellit that the JDF relied on to secure essential needs such as fuel and food items. In the subsequent days, the RSF intensified military operations, attacking and destroying a cluster of villages around Al-Fashir. By the following month of May, the RSF deployed more troops and laid siege around the city, which has since killed more than 700 civilians and injured more than 1,100 others, according to the United Nations.

As of February, 2025, nine months since the start of the battle for Al-Fashir, neither side has been able to neutralize the other. The RSF appears determined to capture the city at any cost despite the heavy losses it continues to suffer among its ranks, including its top commanders such as Ali Yagoub and Abdulrahman Garin Shatta, who were respectively killed during battles in Al-Fashir in June and September 2024. Despite its losses, the RSF will likely continue to apply a two-pronged approach in its quest to concur Al-Fashir. First, by continuing intense shelling from afar with mortars, drones, and heavy weaponry to overwhelm the defending fighters and crush their resistance. Second, launching sporadic and unprovoked attacks on remote towns and villages belonging to its opponents’ communities in North Darfur to stretch the JDF’s capacity in defending Al-Fashir.

However, it is important to note that the SAF has escalated offensives across Khartoum in the first week of February, making some “huge gains” in recapturing key RSF-held positions. The SAF stepped up further attacks against the RSF in Darfur’s neighboring state of North Kordofan. On Feb. 2, Sudan’s top military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan visited the strategic city of Um-Ruwaba in North Kordofan twice in 24 hours after it fell under SAF’s control on Jan. 30. The city connects central Sudan via the White Nile to North Kordofan State and areas further west, including Darfur. These military developments might strengthen the SAF’s position to deploy extra manpower and equipment to support its troops in Al-Fashir. Meanwhile, after losing control of Al-Gerzira State in central Sudan, key areas in Khartoum and Kordofan States, RSF fighters, including war-wounded soldiers retreated to Darfur. This is a further showcase of the significance of the Al-Fashir in becoming the potential final battleground in Sudan’s war.

As stated above, the JDF, supported by SAF, is equally unlikely to relinquish the battle with ease. They retain decent manpower and the equipment they need to confront the RSF, including mounted machine guns, light weapons, heavy artillery, armored vehicles, army carriers, all of which is supported by air cover. Press reports from international media have proclaimed the “imminent fall of Al-Fashir,” (for example here and here), but unless some deal for a truce is secured the battle for Al-Fashir is likely to stretch on.

Civilians Caught in the Conflict

As the battle for Al-Fashir continues, civilians in the city and surrounding IDP camps such as Zamzam and Abu Shouk face an array of threats, including death and severe physical harm, starvation, and displacement. Through November and December 2024, the RSF escalated attacks on Zamzam camp, forcing aid workers to flee for their lives. The RSF claims its attacks are justified because of presence of enemy combatants inside the camp, but the JDF and IDP residents deny the claim. On Dec. 23, 2024, the humanitarian aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported that the camp was subjected to repeated shelling by the RSF, saying that its medical staff treated over 40 injured persons, including children as young as 4 years old suffering severe trauma. “Not only have people been starving, but they are also now being bombarded and forced to flee again,” Michel-Olivier Lacharité, the philanthropic aid body’s Head of Emergency Operations said. There is growing concern that the RSF’s potential capture of Al-Fashir could accompany a mass exodus of residents and reprisal attacks against residents of non-Arab origin in the city and beyond.

RSF fighters have already demonstrated a disastrous lack of discipline vis-à-vis civilian protection or commitment to rules of engagement. SAF troops have also been accused of committing serious violations against civilians, including indiscriminate airstrikes and firing heavy weapons in densely populated areas. SAF affiliated fighters have also been accused of committing ethnic cleansing during the recapture of Wad Madani, the capital of Al-Gezira state on Jan. 12. The U.N. said that it documented 21 killings based on ethnic profiling of the victims in two attacks on civilians living in Kanabi, which are historically segregated encampments in Al-Gezira. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, said on Jan. 17 the attacks were motivated by ethnic hatred, adding that the number of civilians killed during the violence “are very likely higher.” The U.N. also accused both the SAF and the RSF of obstructing humanitarian aid delivery to civilians and using starvation tactics against 25 million civilians in the country.

The unfolding humanitarian disaster in Zamzam demonstrates this grim reality. Media reports on Feb. 8 indicated that the RSF carried out attacks in the vicinity of Zamzam, killing three people and detained dozens of IDPs from the camp accusing them of supplying fuel and food items to the SAF and the JDF inside Al-Fashir. Meanwhile, MSF said in a statement on Feb. 2 that its field hospital in Zamzam treated 21 wounded persons, half of them children.

The U.N. has called on warring sides to halt attacks on civilians and ensure their protection. While these pronouncements are needed to remind the parties to the conflict of their responsibilities to observe civilian protection and the laws of armed conflict, they fell short of making any concrete steps or punitive measures towards holding the violators to account. The perpetrators and enablers of indiscriminate attacks against civilians should be vigorously pursued including the through the ongoing efforts of the International Criminal Court. International efforts should be doubled with a firm pressure on the parties to the conflict and their respective regional backers to promptly desist from attacks on civilians.

Wider Repercussions

While it is early to draw any conclusions about the outcome of the battle for Al-Fashir, its significance in the broader context of the war cannot be underestimated. It could have far-reaching reverberations especially if RSF fighters manage to storm the city. A decisive result may not only determine the fate of Darfur, but likely that of the entire country. At the domestic level, the fall of Al-Fashir to the RSF could severely cripple the SAF’s capacity to protect strategic cities and potentially win the war. SAF’s fragilities were exposed when RSF fighters swept through some key cities starting from Khartoum, Nyala in Darfur, Wad Medani and Sinja, the capital of Sennar state in central Sudan. Though the SAF did regain some territories, including the recapture of Sinja and Wad Madani respectively in November 2024 and January, as well as areas in Khartoum, the RSF could still launch surprise offensives to seize new ground.

If such a takeover occurs, Al-Fashir would be the springboard from which the RSF could expand its territorial control with ease toward the eastern fronts, including the potential of capturing the key strategic city of Al-Ubayyind in Sudan’s central west to protect the back of its forces in Khartoum. The RSF could also free up thousands of fighters and battle equipment to strengthen its military operations in other fronts beyond Darfur. If the RSF succeeds in attaining such a breakthrough, it might well become the de facto and sole ruler of a region of the approximate size of mainland Spain with thousand miles of open borders with CAR, Chad, Libya and South Sudan.

The fall of Al-Fashir to the RSF could throw Darfur into further turmoil, including the possibility of becoming a haven for transnational militant and/or terrorist groups from the Sahel region who could further destabilize fragile States such the coup-prone Chad, Libya, Mali, CAR, and Niger. For instance, Libya’s government in the East is believed to be on good terms with the RSF, permitting the group to transit fighters and weapons across the desert into Sudan. The SAF and the JDF have deployed forces in key areas along the border with Libya and engaged in occasional clashes with the RSF to cut off their supply lines from Libya. The country will remain among the options the RSF could still rely on in the foreseeable future for reinforcements and shelter. It is worth noting that the former Darfur rebels who now form the backbone of the JDF had previously operated in East Libya where they collaborated with the forces of the Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar before returning back to Darfur with better equipment and resources. The impact of the Sudan’s war will remain one of the destabilizing factors that could further derail Libya’s long quest for reform and democracy. Libya after the fall of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi became fertile ground for militants from the Sahel region, including Sudan, to acquire weapons and engage in arms sales, drug trafficking, and human trafficking.

Among Sudan’s neighboring countries, Chad to the west is the country with the most influence and direct links with the unfolding crisis in Sudan. The vastly uncontrolled and open borders between the two countries enabled the RSF to leverage its control of the rest of Darfur to secure supplies and fighters from Chad. Over the course of the current conflict, disillusioned youth from Arab ethnic groups from Chad as well as Niger saw an opportunity to fight in Sudan in support of their kin. Chadian rebels also started operating inside Sudan, fighting alongside the warring sides since the early days of the conflict. In August 2024, a prominent Chadian rebel commander who fought for the RSF was reportedly killed during clashes in Al-Fashir. Chadian individuals sympathetic with the JDF through tribal links have also fought in Al-Fashir against the RSF. In December 2024, the JDF announced that it had foiled an attempt to smuggle sophisticated weapons and drones into Al-Fashir coming from Chad. The JDF claimed that it conducted a military operation targeting RSF supply lines on the border with Chad and Libya. It said it captured three large drones capable of carrying air-to-surface missiles, in addition to six drones of smaller sizes. Chad has been heavily implicated in siding with the RSF including reports by the U.N. that Chad received dozens of cargo planes carrying suspected shipments of weapons from the United Arab Emirates that are being used to fuel the war in Sudan.

Chad is also the largest host of Sudanese refugees from Darfur, with a total of 580,000 from the previous cycles of violence since 2003, as well as additional persons displaced in the current war. Chad’s alleged support to the RSF stirred the wrath of the Sudanese military-dominated government, which officially filed a complaint to the African Union regarding Chadian involvement in Sudan’s war. On Jan. 3, a Sudanese minister called on the country’s military and political leaders to respond to the “brutal aggression” by Chad. While the SAF is too occupied and haggard to implement such threats, the future outlook of the two countries bilateral relations remains bleak with the possibility of cross border attacks and proxy wars. Rouge terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, which operates in Chad, could benefit from the lawlessness and flow of cheap arms into Chad from Darfur to increase their activities. On Nov. 10, 2024, the group carried out a lethal attack on a Chadian army post killing 15 servicemen and wounding dozens.

CAR is another fragile State that is affected by the spillover of fighting in Sudan. Sudan’s war began to spill into CAR as the SAF and RSF both reportedly conducted operations in border areas. Reports by U.N. experts noted that while the SAF launched air raids on suspected RSF positions along the border with Darfur, the paramilitary group has recruited fighters from rebel groups in CAR. The RSF reportedly used its bases in the town of Am-Dafok on the Sudanese side as a key hub for supplies and recruitment of new fighters. In the early phases of the conflict, the Russian mercenary group Wagner reportedly collaborated with the RSF through CAR supplying missiles to the paramilitary group to support its fight against the SAF, raising fears of further instability in both countries. CAR, which also shares borderland with South Sudan, hosted thousands of Sudanese refugees, notably in the Vakaga region. The U.N.’s Panel of Experts on the CAR warned in June 2024 that “the spillover effect of the conflict in the Sudan has significantly affected the situation” in CAR. This is represented by security threats to the country’s stability and humanitarian operations.

Looking Ahead

To avoid further destruction, human suffering, and the spread of anarchy in Sudan and beyond, the current stagnation around Al-Fashir and other hot fronts needs to be addressed through a peaceful resolution of the conflict, including addressing the historical root causes of wars in Sudan. This should ideally start with a viable ceasefire as the first step towards ending the violence. The meeting between Sudanese army chief al-Burhan and the Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Burhanettin Duran on Jan. 5 in Port Sudan – which followed an offer by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to mediate between the Sudanese government and the UAE to resolve tension between the two sides – could give a much-needed push to revive the suspended peace talks. Erdogan, who held a telephone conversation with al-Burhan on Dec. 13, 2024, spoke of his commitment to establishing peace and stability in Sudan. Turkey maintained multi-million investment projects in Sudan during al-Bashir’s time in power and kept close ties with al-Burhan, inviting him for an official visit to Ankara where he met Erdogan in April 2021. Following the outbreak of the war, Sudan’s army leader kept his family in Turkey and paid a personal visit in May 2024 to attend the funeral of his son, who died in a motorcycle accident.

The new Trump administration should support Turkey’s initiative. U.S. President Donald Trump should leverage his previous success in Sudan, when he initiated an intricate diplomatic engagement with Sudan that eventually culminated in the removal of the country from the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) during his first term in December 2020. In addition to Turkey, Trump could work with other influential regional countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as through the United States’ direct contact with the Sudanese government in Port Sudan to create the conditions for a humanitarian truce towards ending the war. These measures should include reviving some of the key aspects contained in the U.S.-Saudi Arabia sponsored Jeddah Agreement signed by the conflict parties in May 2023.

IMAGE: A man stands by as a fire rages in a livestock market area in al-Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state, on Sept. 1, 2023, in the aftermath of bombardment by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The conflict between Sudan’s army under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo spread in late August 2023 to North Darfur state.  (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

The post Understanding Sudan’s Conflict by Focusing on Darfur appeared first on Just Security.

That calm was shattered on Inauguration Day, as Trump issued an executive order freezing all new foreign development assistance for 90 days. Stating that “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy…serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries,” Trump directed that a review to determine “whether to continue, modify, or cease each foreign assistance program.” In separate actions, Trump effectively halted climate and health cooperation by ordering the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the World Health Organization, and readopted the so-called “global gag rule” (also known as the Mexico City Policy for where it was first announced) that prohibits any organization receiving U.S. government funding from providing abortion services or counseling, even with other funding.

And the first week ended with Secretary Rubio doubling down on Trump’s executive order on foreign aid in his own message to all U.S. diplomatic missions, which help oversee U.S. foreign aid implementation on the ground, with language so uninformative and opaque as to be ominous.   Rubio’s message gave the new State Department director of policy planning, Michael Anton, the lead on the policy review.

Taken together, these actions are damaging, destructive, punitive, and likely unconstitutional.  The actions raise five principal concerns: (a) the sheer magnitude of the human damage that will be inflicted, especially on the world’s most vulnerable; (b) the breakdown of the bipartisan consensus that has supported foreign aid as an instrument of U.S. national security, alongside diplomacy and defense; (c) the overreach of executive authority relative to Congress and other governmental and non-governmental development partners; (d) the sidelining of development professionals at USAID and other executive agencies (the latest news last night on USAID was that “nearly every career staffer who holds a top leadership role at the agency, at least in Washington,” has been placed on administrative leave); and (e) the willingness of Rubio to push back on White House decisions he knows are improper.  

Elections Have Consequences

Let’s be clear. There’s nothing improper about a new administration, especially one that won voters with promises of a deep ideological change, launching a critical review of the programs and priorities of its predecessor. And it’s not uncommon to pause – and ultimately reverse or cancel after a review — efforts likely to be at odds with new directions. With respect to foreign assistance, I’ve been on both sides of such reviews. As State Department deputy director for policy planning under President George W. Bush’s administration, I worked on a review in 2001. This process revealed some serious challenges relating to overlapping authorities and lack of coordination and led to the creation of the State/USAID Joint Policy Council. Later, as USAID deputy administrator under President Barack Obama, I partnered with Policy Planning Director Anne-Marie Slaughter to finalize a similar review in 2010, the first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.  

In both cases, State and USAID career staff sought relief when our deliberations were holding up vital funding decisions, and there were clear guidelines for seeking relief.     We sought to cause minimum disruption. For Trump, the tagline seems to be “Do as much harm as possible.”  

The Human and Strategic Costs

This action will starve thousands of people worldwide of non-controversial programs to advance and improve health, education, water and sanitation, infrastructure, housing, and food security. Projects that have no immediate financial backup will fail, and years of progress will be sacrificed. People living with HIV/AIDS will lose access to life-saving medicines under PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, established by President Bush); former USAID Assistant Administrator for Global Health Atul Gawande reports that this “stops direct services for 6.5 million orphans, vulnerable children, and their caregivers affected by HIV in 23 countries.” Farmers will miss planting seasons due to the lack of seeds, fertilizers, and irrigation. Humanitarian deminers will cease their removal of landmines throughout the world and leave these hidden killers in the ground for children to discover.

America’s hard-earned reputation as a reliable partner will be tarnished, an outcome certain to be exploited by China and other global rivals, as Michael Schiffer outlined at Just Security yesterday. The broad-brush ban will even harm assistance priorities that conservatives have long prioritized, such as support for international religious freedom and initiatives to end human trafficking and drug trafficking.  

Abandoning America’s Development Consensus

The new administration is pulling back on programs in many areas that I personally support, including climate change, human rights, empowering marginalized populations, and reproductive freedom, though I acknowledge, again, that elections have consequences. But Trump and Rubio’s actions this week threaten America’s longstanding commitment to global development, stability, and prosperity via programs that have enjoyed broad bipartisan support since the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II, to the great benefit of the United States economically, politically, and otherwise. 

Is this the proper interpretation of the American electorate’s 49.9 percent plurality for Trump? Armed with a much greater mandate from the 2009 elections, Obama, with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and USAID Administrator Raj Shah, recognized the importance of continuity and the intrinsic value of development programs already in place under a Republican administration before them. While launching new initiatives such as Power Africa to double access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa and USAID Forward to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the agency, they embraced and enlarged PEPFAR, expanded the mandate of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which supports the poorest countries that are committed to just and democratic governance, economic freedom and investing in their populations”), and built on the Bush administration’s response to skyrocketing global food prices in 2007 and 2008 by creating the Feed the Future initiative.

Secretary Rubio’s Jan. 24 memo also calls into question civilian assistance that supports key U.S. security and defense interests. The language in Rubio’s Jan. 24 memo to all diplomatic missions specifically exempting foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt from the 90-day freeze suggests that such funding in other regions is not exempt. Did he really mean to freeze such funding in East Asia (think Taiwan), the Middle East (Jordan), Eastern Europe, and Latin America?  

The Danger of Executive Overreach

Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress holds the purse strings. Congress has not been shy about exercising its authority and prerogatives. The vast majority of U.S. development assistance is appropriated by Congress for specific programs and projects, and legislative language is often quite detailed. When the administration unilaterally pulls those strings closed, it is inviting a constitutional crisis that America can ill-afford at this critical moment, as the courts may end up relitigating the Impoundment Act of 1974, which limits the executive branch’s prerogative to withhold funding that Congress has appropriated.

Further, the United States has built up an impressive network of partners and “force multipliers” for its development work in the form of private companies, non-governmental organizations, faith-based groups, universities, foundations, other donor nations, and international institutions. The high-handed approach reflected in the unilateral foreign aid freeze calls into question the willingness of those partners to join with the United States in the future, given its apparent unreliability. 

The administration seems to believe it can threaten and punish such partners into abandoning their own agenda and fully embrace that of Trump. Will the administration meet its obligations to international assistance programs and global funds through the United Nations, the World Bank, the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and other institutions? The decision to give notice that the United States will withdraw from the World Health Organization and yesterday’s follow-on order that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stop cooperating with the WHO would seem to be clear signals. If the U.S. government fails to honor its obligations, this is a prescription for isolationist gridlock.

And where will the Trump agenda come from? In my experience, the 90 days allotted to the State Department is insufficient for a comprehensive review of the questions raised by Trump, especially if it is to be based on informed input from stakeholders. By contrast, 90 days is about the time it takes to draft implementation guidelines for a pre-cooked policy. It seems clear, given the pattern of the administration’s actions since the election and the links between incoming State Department appointees and the Heritage Foundation’s extreme Project 2025, that the chapters on State and USAID in that plan for the Trump administration is the actual playbook.

What Now for USAID? 

By this point in the Biden transition in 2021, former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power had been named as USAID administrator as part of the first round of presidential appointments.  President Biden had committed that USAID would have a full seat on the National Security Council, a signal of the importance Biden placed on development as an equal partner to diplomacy and defense. 

By contrast, there are barely rumors even now of a front-runner for the role in this new administration. The names of the key foreign aid implementing agencies — USAID, the MCC, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), and other key U.S. agencies in the development arena – aren’t even mentioned in either Trump’s executive order or in Rubio’s memo. Combined with the freeze on new assistance, this sends the message that the new administration discounts the foreign aid work of these agencies. By law, USAID is an autonomous agency whose administrator reports to the secretary of state. This structure ensures that USAID pursues objectives set by the president and the secretary of state, but also that USAID has an empowered advisory and implementing role. In his first term, Trump properly respected that structure under the leadership of Administrator Mark Green, and U.S. foreign assistance was better for it. By contrast, it is quite unlikely that the new administrator, assuming there will be one, will have been confirmed by the time the policy on foreign assistance will be carved in stone. Put bluntly, the actions of the first week represent an existential threat to USAID.

Standing Up for Policy and Professionals

How Secretary Rubio addresses these issues over the coming weeks will set the tone for his tenure as steward of American foreign policy and advocate for the professionals who carry it out. During 35 years of federal service at the White House, the National Security Council,  the State Department, USAID, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, I have been proud to devote my professional skills to administrations from both parties with loyalty and non-partisan commitment. At State, I worked for great leaders, from Cyrus Vance to George Shultz to Colin Powell to Hillary Clinton. They used their positions to speak truth to power in defense of American global interests and in defense of Civil Service and Foreign Service professionals. Even after last week’s backsliding, I hold out hope that Secretary Rubio’s career-long appreciation for the role of foreign assistance and his own proud record of public service mean that he will follow this tradition.

Editor’s note: This piece is part of the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of the Trump Administration’s Executive Actions

IMAGE: A woman and her daughter attend a medical consultation at a mobile clinic operated by the Institute for Population Health and Development (ISPD), in partnership with USAID and IOM, at the Marie Jeanne High School refugee camp in central Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 29, 2024. The clinic was offering general healthcare services to refugees. The camp, home to 5,500 families, had reported 13 individuals testing positive for HIV. (Photo by CLARENS SIFFROY/AFP via Getty Images)

The post ‘Elections Have Consequences’: Trump and Rubio’s Foreign Aid Halt Will Hit the World’s Most Vulnerable appeared first on Just Security.