From the Current Political Deadlock to the Activation of the Charter of Salvation and State-Buildin

08:15 PM October, 10 2026

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The Charter of Salvation and State-Building — The Transitional Bridge Initiative (Sixth Edition)
The Charter of Salvation and State-Building — Activation Initiatives (Sixth Edition)
The Transitional Bridge Initiative

From the Current Political Deadlock to the Activation of the Charter of Salvation and State-Building

Revised sixth edition: the Initiative retains the fifth edition's alignment with the Eighth Revision of the Charter of Salvation and State-Building and with the Activation Protocol in its documented form (September 2026), and adds safeguards for the Task Government that close the accountability vacuum before the first ascending representative body is formed and prevent its transformation into a permanent elite, together with measures that strengthen the independent hate speech observatory and protect it from sliding into an instrument of censorship. This edition is presented entirely as text, without tables.

10 October 2026
Dr. Ali Abdullahi Elkhalifa Taha

Introduction: The Nature of the Current Deadlock

The Sudanese landscape today is living through a compound deadlock: a mutual escalation of war rhetoric between the leaderships of the army and the Rapid Support Forces, which privileges the logic of military decisiveness over any political horizon; fragmentation within the civilian body that prevents it from advancing a unified and implementable alternative project; a multiplicity of mediation platforms that allows the parties to move between them in search of the terms most favourable to them; and the absence of any mechanism linking any talk of "dialogue" or "amnesty" to a clear objective, namely actually ending the war rather than adapting to its reality.

The fourth edition retained five substantive amendments that remain in force in this edition: separating the track for disarming the gateway economy networks from the track for holding their financial assets to account; linking the ceiling on the exclusion of the dissolved National Congress Party to an automatic review upon completion of the work of the Truth and Reparations Commission; the mechanism of the simultaneous minimum between transitional justice and financial sovereignty; a maximum ceiling of 30% on external funding; and an independent hate speech observatory that holds no direct power of suppression.

The fifth edition, whose additions remain in force, added full alignment with the Eighth Revision of the Charter, in seven points: placing the mandate of the Task Government within the absolute ceiling on the transitional period, which does not exceed five years (Section IV, Part 5); forming the Task Government according to the formula for the caretaker body provided for in the main text (Section IV, Part 4); adopting weighted consensus as the rule of decision-making in the Dialogue Conference, together with the corrective balancing thresholds (Section II, Parts 3 and 6); extending integration and demobilisation to all armed formations, while separating their institutional fate from the criminal responsibility of their members, and subjecting the high command to an accountable civilian authority (Section III, Parts 2 and 5); assigning the financial portfolio to the civilian institutions provided for in the main text instead of the "Financial Sovereignty Authority" (Section VI); commencing transitional justice in parallel with the ceasefire immediately (Section IV, Part 3); and supporting a unified mediation platform and regulating the relationship with the Emergency Response Rooms (Section IV, Part 2; and Section VIII, Part 2).

In response to observations raised in public debate on the Initiative, this sixth edition adds two amendments: safeguards for the Task Government in five measures, most notably six-monthly oversight sessions of the Dialogue Conference with the power to withdraw confidence, a bar on members of the government standing for election, and a prohibition on irreversible decisions (Part III); and measures to strengthen the independent hate speech observatory, most notably adopting the threshold test of the Rabat Plan of Action, a graduated impact without any power of blocking, an electoral code of conduct, and independent oversight of the Observatory itself (Part VI).

I. The Governing Principle — Sequencing, Not Simultaneity

Restructuring the military institution is a legitimate and necessary aim, but it is treated here as the fruit of achieved political stability, not as a precondition for it. When a government exists that enjoys declared consensual legitimacy, and the national tasks are clearly defined, restructuring becomes an institutional process managed by consensus and from within an existing legitimacy, not a seizure of powers from a party that regards it as an existential threat.

This sequencing serves two aims at once: it spares the country a security vacuum at an extremely fragile moment, and it prevents any party — whether military or civilian — from monopolising power, because political legitimacy will have preceded any rearrangement of force.

An anticipated objection and a response

Some civilian forces may hold that an actual cessation of fighting on the ground — not merely a framework security arrangement — is the condition that must precede any meaningful political legitimacy, because negotiating while battles continue grants the party that is stronger on the battlefield disproportionate influence over the design of the emerging legitimacy itself. This is a serious objection, and this Initiative neither ignores it nor assumes that everyone will accept the proposed sequencing without discussion.

The response embedded in this vision: the Initiative does not separate legitimacy from the cessation of fighting; rather, it makes the declaration of the transitional security arrangement and of the ceasefire, with an agreed monitoring mechanism, a condition that accompanies the start of the process of political representation rather than one that follows it — as the unified timeline below makes clear. What is actually deferred until after political legitimacy is established is neither the cessation of hostilities nor the commencement of transitional justice, but specifically the deep and lasting restructuring of the military institution — because it is the latter that requires the cover of an existing political legitimacy in order to be managed by consensus from within, rather than by seizure from without. Those who consider even this phased arrangement insufficient, and who demand more stringent field guarantees for the cessation of fighting before any other step, are engaged in a legitimate debate to be conducted within the Dialogue Conference itself, not an objection that overturns the logic of sequencing at its foundation.

→ Charter mechanism: separating the founding of legitimacy from the rearrangement of force, and prohibiting the combination of the command of any armed formation with partisan political activity (Section III, Parts 4 and 5); and the holding of the ceasefire in accordance with the monitoring mechanism as the first of the benchmarks of achievement (Section IV, Part 5)

II. State Cohesion and the Prevention of Disintegration — The Governing Principle for All That Follows

The greatest danger facing Sudan today is not the form of government, but the survival of the entity itself. A slide towards partition or protracted civil war eliminates the very object of the dispute, and turns every discussion of democracy and transitional justice into a discussion about a state that no longer exists.

● Protecting the unity of the national territory and preventing the fragmentation of the state is the first task of the armed forces as the unifying national institution — a constitutional task on which Sudanese do not disagree, which the armed forces perform under a civilian authority accountable to a representative body, and without the office of head of state and the command of the armed forces being combined in a single person or a single body, as the Charter's main text provides (Section III, Part 5).
● The political forces, for their part, are asked to place the priority of the country's unity above their other differences, and to defer political and ideological score-settling — whichever side it comes from — to a stage in which differences are managed through the ballot box rather than through polarisation in time of war.
This is not a concession by one party to another, but a mutual acknowledgement that every party loses everything if the state is lost.

III. The Comprehensive National Dialogue Conference and the Formation of the Task Government

The call for national reconciliation is a sound principle, but it remains suspended unless it answers its operational question: how do we bring the majority of the political forces together with the military institution — as a signatory party at a single table, not as an external guarantor above the process — without excluding any party؟ The mechanism rests on five foundations:

1. Inclusion without political or intellectual exclusion

No party is excluded on account of its political position or intellectual affiliation. Exclusion on the basis of opinion is the mechanism that produced every cycle of coups and division in our modern history. Excepted from this is the dissolved National Congress Party, as detailed in the following item — a legal exception for an entity dissolved by force of law, not the exclusion of an opinion or an intellectual current.

2. The established exception: the dissolved National Congress Party

Excluding the dissolved National Congress Party from political activity during the transitional period is one of the entitlements of the December Revolution, and it remains the subject of broad consensus among the civilian forces. It does not constitute a breach of the principle of inclusion above, because it rests not on political position or intellectual affiliation, but on an existing legal status: an entity whose dissolution was decreed by an enforceable legal text (the Dismantling of the 30 June 1989 Regime and Removal of Empowerment Act, 2019), and which bears documented responsibility for the coup of 30 June 1989 and the empowerment and corruption of institutions that followed from it.

This paragraph, as in the fourth edition, separates the affirmation of the principle in the Dialogue Conference itself from the drafting of the precise detailed rules, which are referred to an independent legal committee to be formed later. The purpose of this separation is to protect the Conference from having the debate over the exception turn into an interpretive battle that obstructs consensus on the broader sequencing, without touching the substance of the entitlement itself.

Proposed text (affirmation of the principle)

The dissolved National Congress Party, in its legal personality and its organisational fronts, shall remain excluded from engaging in political activity and from participating in the institutions of the transitional period, in implementation of the decision to dissolve it and of the provisions governing the dismantling of the 30 June 1989 regime. This exclusion shall apply to the legal entity itself, and to those who bear documented leadership responsibility in the party or in the organs of the dissolved regime, or against whom enforceable judgments or judicial decisions have been issued relating to crimes of empowerment, corruption or violations — without extending to mere former party membership, or to civil servants by virtue of membership alone, or to the Islamist current as an intellectual current with an inherent right to organise and to express itself. Every person covered by the exclusion in their individual capacity shall have the right of appeal before an independent judicial body. Nor shall this exclusion be deemed permanent: it shall be subject to an automatic review upon the Truth and Reparations Commission's completion of its work, by which the possibility of extending or terminating its application shall be determined, without its automatically extending beyond the general elections merely because that review has not been completed, and unless a judicial ruling is issued to the contrary.

Proposed text (referral of procedural details)

The drafting of the detailed rules on the scope of this exclusion and on the mechanism for contesting it — including the precise determination of the categories covered, the formation of the independent judicial mechanism competent to adjudicate on it by reasoned and appealable decisions, and the procedures for such appeal — shall be referred to an independent legal committee to be formed within the first weeks of the Task Government's work, provided that its rules are submitted for ratification as part of the final Consensus Document before they enter into force.

Explanation and rationale

● The exclusion is directed at the legal entity and its fronts, and at those who bear specific leadership or judicial responsibility — not at everyone who was ever a member of the party, nor at the Islamist current as an intellectual current with an inherent right to organise and to express itself. Conflating the two turns the exclusion from a legal measure into an ideological purge, which reproduces the cycle of exclusion that the Initiative seeks to break.
● Separating the affirmation of the principle from the drafting of its procedural details allows the Dialogue Conference to settle the substantive question (whether or not the exclusion stands) without its time and consensual momentum being consumed by details that may require a longer, specialised legal discussion — while the full commitment remains that those details will be drafted and ratified later, not left in abeyance indefinitely.
● Assigning determination and appeal to an independent judicial mechanism — by reasoned and appealable decisions — is the practical safeguard against using the exclusion to eliminate political opponents beyond its intended scope, or to expand it gradually to include those it did not target. These are the same procedural safeguards that the Charter's main text requires for this exclusion (Section V, Part 6).
● Linking the ceiling on the exclusion to an automatic review upon completion of the work of the Truth and Reparations Commission — not to a fixed electoral date — makes it a measure capable of objective assessment rather than a rigid administrative term, and prevents it from ending automatically before the documentation of the dissolved regime's responsibilities has been completed, or from continuing without justification once those responsibilities have been established.
3. A limited-mandate national transitional government

It is explicitly acknowledged that it is not a government of full popular representation — for that can be achieved only through elections — but rather a Task Government whose declared purpose is: to halt fragmentation, to restore services, and to prepare the country for the phased elections ascending from the local units. This is the formula that the Charter's main text provides for the caretaker body (Section IV, Part 4): a small body of non-partisan independent experts, named by cross-regional consensus among the signatory civilian and societal forces, and accountable to the first ascending representative body to be formed. The military institution signs the Consensus Document as a party to it, without participating in naming the government or in its leadership, and without any party — military, civilian, or the grouping convening the Conference itself — monopolising the naming of its members.

Safeguards for the Task Government (sixth-edition addition)

The Task Government faces two dangers inherent in its nature: an accountability vacuum, since it is accountable to the first ascending representative body, which will not be formed until close to the end of its mandate; and its transformation into a permanent technocratic elite that invests its transitional position in what follows. The Initiative addresses both dangers through five measures to be included in the Consensus Document.

Proposed text

Throughout its mandate, the Task Government shall be subject to the following safeguards:

(a) The National Dialogue Conference shall remain in session through oversight sessions held every six months, at which a public report on the implementation of the tasks shall be submitted to it; it may withdraw confidence from the government as a whole or from any of its members by the weighted-consensus threshold. This oversight mandate shall pass automatically to the first ascending representative body upon its formation.

(b) Neither the head of government nor any of its members may stand as a candidate in the phased elections or in the first general elections following the transitional period.

(c) The government may not take decisions that cannot be reversed outside its declared tasks, including: long-term sovereign borrowing, the granting of new concessions in extractive resources, the conclusion of binding foreign treaties or agreements, and the making of permanent structural changes to state institutions. Whatever of these is required by extreme necessity shall be referred to the Dialogue Conference for decision by weighted consensus, and all else shall be carried over to the elected institutions.

(d) Members of the government shall be selected according to published nomination criteria, following public hearings of candidates before the Dialogue Conference. Each member shall submit a declaration of financial interests on taking office and on leaving it, published through the Financial Transparency Authority, and the government's decisions shall be published with their reasons.

(e) The government shall work through the Independent Civil Service Commission rather than through loyalist appointments, and shall be bound to consult in advance with the relevant local councils and the sectoral teams of the Grand National Mobilisation before any decision affecting a particular region.

Explanation and rationale

● The oversight sessions close the accountability vacuum without creating a new body: the Dialogue Conference is the source of the government's legitimacy in the first place, and it is natural that it should remain its overseer until the ascending body that inherits this mandate is formed.
● The bar on candidacy removes the incentive to turn the transitional administration into an electoral platform, and reassures the competing forces that the government is not a party to the competition: whoever manages the transition does not compete for what comes after it.
● The prohibition on irreversible decisions turns the description "limited-mandate" from a phrase in the preamble into an enforceable constraint, and prevents the country's future from being mortgaged before elected institutions exist.
● The danger lies not in technocratic expertise but in its isolation from the grassroots. Working through the Independent Civil Service Commission, and mandatory consultation with the local councils and the Nafeer, give the government an executive capacity drawn from existing institutions, instead of its building a loyal apparatus of its own — a direct application of the Institutional Wall.
→ Charter mechanism: the caretaker body (Section IV, Part 4) + the Institutional Wall (Section VII) + weighted consensus (Section II, Part 3)

4. Legitimising the government and the tasks first

The government's mandate, tasks and time ceiling are to be defined in a declared Consensus Document, so that any subsequent measure — including the restructuring of the army and the control of security breakdowns — is a measure emanating from an agreed legitimacy, not one seized from it.

5. Consensus, not domination

The process is managed according to the logic of weighted consensus, so that the logic of military decisiveness is not reproduced within the dialogue hall: contested issues are decided by a high threshold that prevents any single bloc from imposing its will, and that gives the parties with less military strength a weight that does not depend on their capacity to impose facts on the ground, with the numerical thresholds to be set in the Conference's rules of procedure.

→ Charter mechanism: iftiqār (acknowledged insufficiency — mutual interdependence) + weighted consensus (Section II, Part 3)

The representation structure of the Conference

The Dialogue Conference remains the mechanism that produces both the Task Government and the Consensus Document, with a weighted representation structure: weighted regional representation constitutes 35% of the Conference's seats, according to a composite formula combining displacement, developmental deprivation, conflict intensity and population, with a fixed share of 6% for the contact zones — Abyei and the Nuba Mountains. Existing civilian and political bodies take 25%, with a ceiling that prevents monopoly. The resistance committees, community organisations and trade unions take 20%, as the first practical test of ascending functional legitimacy. The diaspora and independent experts conference takes the remaining 20%, divided into 12% for the diaspora and 8% for the independent experts in a binding advisory role. It is stipulated that neither sex shall hold less than 35% of the seats in each category, with a minimum level of representation for those under thirty-five to be set by the rules of procedure. The details of the 35% formula are calculated in the attached interactive model (Excel file: Regional Representation Formula).

These shares are a preparatory arrangement specific to the Dialogue Conference that precedes the establishment of ascending representation, not a substitute for it: the Constitutional Conference will later be formed through spatial representation ascending from the local units, in which the diaspora is organised as a geographical extension rather than a separate delegation, and the trade unions participate as an advisory voice within the sectoral teams of the Nafeer rather than as a parallel electoral track (Section II, Parts 5 and 6). In this way, the shares of the preparatory moment do not become a permanent structure that reproduces what the Charter came to remedy.

→ Charter mechanism: the Fourth Pillar + ascending functional legitimacy + the corrective balancing rules (Section II, Part 6)

IV. The First Clause of the Consensus Document — The Declared Time Ceiling on the Task Government's Mandate

Proposed text

The mandate of the national transitional government shall be set for a declared period not exceeding twenty-four (24) months from the date of its formation, ending with the holding of the phased elections that begin at the local units and move upward, and the handover of executive authority to a body accountable to the first ascending representative body emerging from them. This period shall not be extended except with the explicit and declared consent of the signatory parties to the Consensus Document acting collectively, once only, and for a period not exceeding half of the original period. The mandate of the Task Government, including any extension, falls within the absolute ceiling on the entire transitional period, which does not exceed five years from the date of the formation of the transitional authority and admits of no extension on any pretext, and the general elections shall be held before it expires.

A note on the length of the ceiling

The positions of a number of civilian forces point to a preference for longer periods — possibly up to 36 months — for a transitional period with full powers, along the lines of the 2019 Constitutional Document, which set the transitional period at thirty-nine months. The period proposed here (24 months) does not contradict that horizon, because it concerns specifically the limited-competence "Task Government" that precedes the phased elections, not the transitional period as a whole; the latter is governed by five declared benchmarks of achievement and an absolute ceiling not exceeding five years, in accordance with the Eighth Revision of the Charter. The choice of a shorter period for the Task Government is deliberate: it narrows the potential window for reversal, and accelerates the transition to legitimacy ascending from the grassroots rather than prolonging a centralised transitional arrangement. Nevertheless, the period itself remains open to consensual review within the Dialogue Conference itself should a majority of the signatory parties consider that the scale of the required tasks calls for a longer horizon — provided that the principle of a declared and defined ceiling, the restriction to a single extension by collective consent, and the absolute ceiling on the transitional period are all retained.

Explanation and rationale

● The essential difference between a "Task Government" and a "permanent fait accompli" is the existence of a written end date. A government without a ceiling effectively loses its transitional character on its first day, however it may be described in the preamble.
● The time ceiling protects all parties, not one party in particular: it reassures the political forces that the arrangement will not turn into a permanent settlement, and it reassures the military institution that what is required of it is a commitment defined in duration and task, not an open-ended concession.
● Linking the mandate to a measurable task (the phased elections and the establishment of the first ascending representative body) rather than to an abstract date makes its expiry objective: it ends when it is accomplished, not when someone decides that it has ended.
● The requirement that any extension be collective, declared, once only, and within the absolute ceiling closes the loophole through which all previous experiences leaked, namely extension by decision of the party that benefits from it. Tasks that fall behind are not taken as a pretext for extension, but are carried over, with a declared account, to the elected institutions.
V. The Second Clause — The Pre-Agreed Restructuring Timetable

Proposed text

The Consensus Document shall include a declared timetable for reforming the security and military system, to be approved and signed simultaneously with the formation of the Task Government, the implementation of which shall begin in phases according to the dates set out in it. The track of integration, demobilisation and restructuring shall apply to all armed formations without exception, including the brigades and formations that arose or expanded in the context of the war alongside either of the two parties; the institutional fate of each formation shall be determined according to professional criteria, while the individual responsibility of its members shall be determined before transitional justice, so that integration confers no immunity, and demobilisation burdens no one with a guilt not individually established against them. The national government, in consultation with the military leadership, shall prepare the detailed plan during the first phase of its mandate, and a declared periodic report on the level of implementation shall be presented.

Explanation and rationale

● The difference between "postponement" and "sequencing" is the existence of a written date. Sequencing means that the clause is approved and signed and has a deadline, and that what has been delayed is implementation, not commitment. Postponement, by contrast, removes the clause from the document entirely and makes it contingent on unspecified circumstances.
● Approving the timetable simultaneously with the formation of the government — not afterwards — means that reform is part of the founding bargain itself, not a demand raised later from a weaker position.
● Extending the track to all formations, while separating institutional fate from individual responsibility, closes the door to a selectivity applied to one party and not another, and prevents integration from becoming a cover for impunity or demobilisation from becoming a collective punishment.
● Phased gradualism makes reform a professional process built in stages that can be absorbed, not a single structural shock.
● The declared periodic report is the practical instrument of guarantee: it makes progress or faltering a matter of public knowledge, and turns commitment from an intention into a performance that can be monitored, without granting any party coercive supervisory authority over the military institution.
The gateway economy: separating the arms track from the money track

The networks of armed levies on roads and crossings — of which recent field monitoring has recorded more than 108 checkpoints — are addressed through two separate, not interdependent, tracks: dismantling their military capacity is a security file managed within the same reform timetable, whereas their accumulated financial assets — real estate, parallel transport companies, and currency exchange bureaux — constitute an independent file handled by the Independent Authority for Dismantling the Shadow Economy in cooperation with the civilian institutions provided for in the Charter's main text: the civilian Central Bank with regard to payment and transfer channels, and the Independent Authority for the Governance of Gold and Extractive Resources with regard to gold, with the results published periodically through the Financial Transparency Authority. This file does not require the completion of the security file, nor is it made contingent upon it; handing over weapons in exchange for political amnesty does not mean laundering accumulated wealth without accountability.

This track distinguishes between local actors acting under compulsion — drivers, small traders and artisanal miners — and the "gateway lords" who have accumulated real wealth; and the appearance of a name in the Authority's database is not deemed a verdict, but rather an indication requiring verification, so that no measure is taken against anyone except by a reasoned decision open to appeal before an independent judicial body. The track is complemented by the transfer of ownership of the companies and commercial activities belonging to the regular military and security institutions to the Ministry of Finance or a civilian public authority, with the exception of military manufacturing subject to parliamentary oversight (Section VI, Part 3); for dismantling irregular levies alone, while the regular military economy remains outside the budget, addresses only half of the problem.

The simultaneous minimum between transitional justice and financial sovereignty

By the same logic, the tracks of transitional justice and financial sovereignty do not wait for one of them to be completed before the other begins. In parallel with the ceasefire immediately — not after it — the local councils begin documenting violations, registering claims and protecting witnesses, according to evidence-preservation standards that allow their use before all levels of justice, including coordination with the International Criminal Court in the situation in Darfur referred to it, in accordance with the principle of complementarity (Section V, Part 3); in parallel, the tracing and preliminary freezing — not full recovery — of the most evident assets and financial networks begins, and the gold governance authority begins publishing concession contracts and production and export volumes. The outputs of these tracks converge upon the formation of the Truth and Reparations Commission, which inherits the local documentation archive, the database of frozen assets and the resource governance records without having to start from scratch in any of them.

→ Charter mechanism: the gateway economy (Protocol, Chapter Six) + three-tier transitional justice + the simultaneous minimum (Protocol, Chapter Two) + inclusion of all formations (Section III, Part 2)

VI. Legitimacy Ascending from the Geographical Base and the Grand National Mobilisation

Genuine representation is not granted from the centre, but ascends from local communities:

● Sudanese communities begin at the level of localities by choosing their representatives on the basis of the geographical local unit (ruqʿa) — a neighbourhood, a fariq, a group of neighbouring villages, or a displacement camp — by name rather than by party list, and on condition of actual residence, not lineage, so as to ensure that those represented know their representative and hold them to account.
● These representatives then ascend to the local, then regional, then national councils, and from there to the Constitutional Conference and the levels of government and parliament, either through an inclusive party representing the majority or as independent members for their constituencies, and every mandate remains subject to recall and review at every stage.
● In this way representation is built from the bottom up, giving rise to a political class rooted in its base, in place of elite bodies that negotiate in the name of those who did not elect them.
This stage is the primary beneficiary of the Task Government's time ceiling: the expiry of the 24 months (Part IV) is the very date on which this ascending legitimacy takes its place. But its construction is not deferred until that date — the Grand National Mobilisation begins its work as a broad popular executive arm from the first day of the Task Government, in parallel with the implementation of the security reform timetable, so that the grassroots structures have actually matured by the time the phased elections arrive, rather than being created from scratch at that point. The Nafeer's cooperation with the Emergency Response Rooms and the other grassroots initiatives that have rebuilt solidarity in the neighbourhoods since the outbreak of the war rests on voluntary coordination and the exchange of expertise, not on organisational subordination; it does not seek to absorb or politicise them, and it safeguards their declared humanitarian neutrality (Section VIII, Part 2).

This transitional stage in particular — from the call, through the founding, to the local and national elections — requires special vigilance towards the discourse of identity-based incitement, which usually precedes violent mobilisation by a period long enough for it to be monitored and for intervention before it turns into a decision on the ground. Accordingly, in parallel with the launch of the Nafeer, an independent hate speech observatory is established, with balanced representation across the regions in the spatial sense defined by the Charter's main text rather than through identity-based quotas, which distinguishes, by means of a public classification methodology, between legitimate political criticism — which is protected absolutely — and identity-based incitement. When a particular discourse crosses a defined threshold in a given geographical local unit, the Observatory notifies the relevant local council and the body competent for transitional justice (the local reconciliation councils until the Truth and Reparations Commission is formed), without the Observatory itself or any central executive body holding a direct power of suppression or blocking on the basis of its report alone. Its funding is subject to the same ceiling on external funding (30%).

Measures to strengthen the Observatory (sixth-edition addition)

The Observatory faces two opposite dangers: sliding into an instrument of censorship used against political criticism, or remaining without effect and ignored by all. The Initiative addresses both dangers together through the following measures.

Proposed text

In its classification, the Observatory shall adopt the six-part threshold test set out in the Rabat Plan of Action issued by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2012), with its elements: context, speaker, intent, content and form, extent of the speech act, and likelihood of harm, including its imminence.

Its impact shall be graduated without any power of blocking: a periodic public report identifying patterns and their sources; then an alert to the relevant local council when the threshold is crossed; then activation of the local reconciliation council; then referral to an independent judicial body in cases of serious incitement only. Every person whose speech is classified shall be notified, and their reply shall be published alongside the report.

Before the phased elections, an electoral code of conduct rejecting identity-based incitement shall be presented to the parties and candidates, and the Observatory shall publish a periodic record of the signatories' compliance with it.

Monitoring shall rest on a grassroots network of trained local monitors in every geographical local unit, in voluntary cooperation with the Emergency Response Rooms and grassroots initiatives without organisational subordination, with the identities of the monitors protected; its coverage shall extend to the digital space and to discourse originating in the diaspora. In cooperation with the Grand National Mobilisation and community leaders, the Observatory shall support programmes for answering incitement with counter-speech.

The Observatory itself shall be subject to an annual independent audit of a sample of its classifications, with the results and its error rate published, and a review committee shall consider disputed classifications. It shall be governed by a board with balanced spatial representation that includes representatives of the journalists' syndicate and the universities, with fixed, non-renewable terms of membership and staggered renewal of its members, and its funding shall be diversified within the ceiling on external funding.

Explanation and rationale

● Adopting a declared international standard for classification protects sharp political criticism, and disciplines the Observatory's work by a standard that no one can tailor to their own measure, thereby reducing challenges to its neutrality.
● The graduated impact means that the Observatory names but does not block: any coercive measure, where necessary, is issued only by an independent judiciary, while the public report and the local alert give the Observatory real effect without any power of suppression.
● The electoral code of conduct and the published record of compliance with it make incitement politically costly before the voters, without any power of blocking.
● The right of reply and the independent audit apply to the Observatory what it applies to others: whoever monitors public discourse must themselves be subject to monitoring.
● Grassroots monitoring draws on the experience of Kenya's Umati initiative ahead of the 2013 elections (Protocol, Chapter Seven), and its extension to the digital space and the diaspora is a necessity, because a large part of Sudanese incitement originates from accounts outside the country.
→ Charter mechanism: the Grand National Mobilisation + ascending functional legitimacy + the Independent Hate Speech Observatory (Protocol, Chapters One and Seven)

VII. Incentives for Adhering to the Sequencing

This vision presupposes a voluntary commitment, on the part of a party holding actual power on the ground, to a sequencing that defers what some of them may regard as an immediate entitlement. Such a commitment is not built on moral appeal alone; it requires tangible incentives contractually linked to each milestone of the timetable:

● Linking each milestone of commitment (cessation of fighting, start of demobilisation, handover of civilian authority) to simultaneous steps by the sponsoring international and regional parties: a gradual lifting of any isolation or restrictions, commensurate with the level of commitment documented in the declared periodic reports (Part V). The Initiative supports unifying the multiple mediation platforms into a single coordinated mechanism, because the multiplicity of platforms allows the parties to move between them in search of the terms most favourable to them (Section IV, Part 2).
● An honourable professional integration track for qualified personnel from all formations covered by integration and demobilisation within a unified national army, according to declared criteria, coupled with genuine economic reintegration programmes for those who are demobilised, so that demobilisation does not become individual exclusion without prospects.
● Declared economic and technical support for the period of the Task Government, conditional on actual progress specifically in the security reform timetable; accountability for the accumulated assets of the gateway economy, by contrast, is measured by an independent benchmark of its own — the activity and documentation of the body charged with it — and not by linking it to the demobilisation timetable, so that faltering in one track does not become a pretext for obstructing the other.
● Any external economic or technical support, whether governmental or non-governmental, is subject to the Charter's upper ceiling (30% of the operating budget of any transitional track or institution belonging to this Initiative), and to the prohibition on receiving any binding direction or funding from an external authority (Section VI, Part 4), thereby preventing the international incentives for commitment themselves from becoming a substitute for an internal Sudanese decision under developmental cover.
These incentives are not a substitute for the institutional safeguards (civilian oversight, the time ceiling, and the Institutional Wall between the political class and the civil service), but complement them: the safeguards prevent reversal, and the incentives make proceeding with the sequencing a rational choice rather than a unilateral sacrifice.

VIII. The Unified Timeline

The first phase begins with preparation and the preparatory regional and diaspora conferences over a period of six to eight weeks, during which delegations are selected according to the adopted proportions. This is followed by the first session of the central conference, lasting two weeks, which concludes with the signing of the Consensus Document — with its two clauses on the time ceiling and the reform timetable — the declaration of the ceasefire and its monitoring mechanism, and the formation of the Task Government. Immediately from the moment of signing, and in parallel, the following begin: the phased implementation of the security reform timetable, the launch of the Grand National Mobilisation, the start of local documentation and witness protection, the tracing and preliminary freezing of assets, the publication of gold governance data, and the formation of an independent technical committee to delimit the boundaries of the local units. The Independent Civil Service Commission, the Independent Hate Speech Observatory and the Independent Authority for Dismantling the Shadow Economy also begin alongside the Task Government. During the first phase of the mandate, specifically between the third and sixth months, the detailed restructuring plan is prepared in consultation between the government and the military leadership, followed by public periodic reports on the level of implementation every six months, submitted to the oversight sessions of the Dialogue Conference held at the same frequency throughout the Task Government's mandate. After twelve months, a first review is conducted to assess the maturity of the grassroots structures and the completeness of registration in the spatial units. The electoral code of conduct is presented to the parties and candidates before the phased elections. The Task Government's mandate ends at the twenty-fourth month — with a single extension of at most half the period and by collective consent — with the phased elections and the establishment of the first ascending representative body. The remainder of the transitional period, within the five-year ceiling, proceeds towards the convening of the Constitutional Conference through ascending representation and the adoption of the constitutional framework by weighted consensus, followed by general elections before the ceiling expires, with whatever remains incomplete carried over to the elected institutions.

IX. Safeguards Against Reversal

Sudanese political history has repeated a familiar pattern: a "temporary" transitional arrangement that turns into a permanent reality. This revised Initiative specifically addresses the loophole that produced this pattern in previous experiences: granting a single party temporary executive authority before the existence of an inclusive political legitimacy to oversee it. The following list matches each historical source of risk with its specific remedy in this Initiative:

● The absence of a binding and enforceable time ceiling — a 24-month ceiling for the Task Government set out in precise text, with a single extension only, of at most half the period and with the collective consent of all signatory parties, within an absolute ceiling on the entire transitional period that does not exceed five years and admits of no extension on any pretext.
● The seizure of powers from a party that regards this as an existential threat — no prior seizure: inclusive political legitimacy is built first, and restructuring is managed from within it by consensus rather than against it, in return for declared incentives for commitment (Part VII).
● The concentration of decision-making in the hands of a single security body — no body monopolises decision-making: the military institution is a signatory party to a single founding document, with a restricted constitutional task (protecting territorial unity), under an accountable civilian authority, without combining the head of state with the command of the armed forces, and with a reform timetable documented through periodic public reports instead of personal oversight.
● The accountability vacuum before the establishment of elected bodies — oversight sessions of the Dialogue Conference every six months, with the power to withdraw confidence from the Task Government or any of its members by weighted consensus, the mandate passing automatically to the first ascending representative body (Part III).
● The transformation of the transitional administration into a permanent elite or an electoral platform — a bar on members of the Task Government standing in the phased and first general elections, a prohibition on irreversible decisions outside the declared tasks, published declarations of financial interests, and work through the Independent Civil Service Commission rather than loyalist appointments (Part III).
● Selectivity in integration and demobilisation — extension of the track to all armed formations without exception, while separating the institutional fate of the formation from the individual criminal responsibility of its members (Part V).
● The suspension of transitional justice in favour of "stability" — commencement of the three-tier justice track in parallel with the ceasefire, with no veto over it by any party, through the simultaneous minimum mechanism that sets documentation, asset tracing and resource governance in motion together from the first day (Part V).
● The monopolisation of representation by central elites — a weighted regional representation formula, shares for grassroots organisations, the diaspora and independent experts with a ceiling on existing political bodies, thresholds for gender and generational balance, and decision-making by weighted consensus, on the understanding that these preparatory shares give way to ascending spatial representation.
● The persistence of the parallel economy as an incentive for reproducing factions — the dismantling of the military capacity of the gateway economy networks is tied to the signed security reform timetable; accountability for their financial assets is an independent track handled by the Independent Authority for Dismantling the Shadow Economy and the civilian financial institutions, which is neither made contingent on the former nor requires its completion in order to begin, together with the transfer of the regular military economy to civilian jurisdiction (Parts V and VII).
● The exclusion of political or ideological parties on the pretext of an early "purge" — inclusion without exclusion on the basis of opinion, an independent civil service commission that protects professional competence from collective purging while referring individual responsibility to transitional justice, and the deferral of political score-settling to the ballot box.
● The expansion of the exclusion of the dissolved National Congress Party into an open-ended instrument of political elimination — confining the exclusion to the legal entity and its fronts and to specific leadership or judicial responsibility, with an individual right of appeal, the referral of its procedural details to an independent legal committee whose rules are ratified later, and its ceiling linked to an automatic review upon completion of the work of the Truth and Reparations Commission, not to a fixed electoral date.
● The transformation of "international support" into de facto tutelage over Sudanese decision-making under developmental cover — a maximum ceiling of 30% of the operating budget of any track or institution belonging to this Initiative that may come from external funding, and a prohibition on any binding direction from an external authority, with the sources of funding published periodically through the Financial Transparency Authority (Part VII).
● The multiplicity of mediation platforms and the parties' movement between them — support for a unified mediation platform within a single coordinated mechanism (Part VII).
● The escalation of identity-based incitement discourse in windows of tension without institutional monitoring — an independent hate speech observatory, with balanced spatial representation across the regions, which classifies according to the threshold test of the Rabat Plan of Action and whose impact is graduated from public reporting to the local alert, then the reconciliation council, then judicial referral in cases of serious incitement only, without any direct power of suppression or blocking, together with a published right of reply, an electoral code of conduct, and an annual independent audit of its classifications (Part VI).
Conclusion

The essence of this perspective is realistic, not idealistic: no one is asked to give up what they hold in response to an idea; rather, everyone is asked to agree to a sequencing that makes the homeland greater than any party within it. Let us begin with what we agree on — Sudan's survival as a united and secure country — and then move on to what we disagree on, once we have built the ground on which differences can be managed without arms.

This Initiative is not an end in itself, but a bridge designed to fold away automatically once its function is complete — from sequencing (not simultaneity) between state cohesion, the legitimisation of the Task Government and the restructuring of the army, through a Comprehensive National Dialogue Conference with weighted representation, to a legitimacy ascending from the geographical base and carried by the Grand National Mobilisation, within an absolute ceiling on the transitional period not exceeding five years. Nor does the Initiative present itself as a substitute for existing Sudanese initiatives and alliances, but as a contribution added to them on the basis of "complementing, not confronting".

This Initiative integrates, in a single practical sequence, the mechanisms of the Charter of Salvation and State-Building and its Activation Protocol: ascending functional legitimacy, the Fourth Pillar and weighted consensus, three-tier transitional justice, the simultaneous minimum, the gateway economy, the ceiling on external funding, the Independent Hate Speech Observatory, the Grand National Mobilisation, the Institutional Wall, and the principle of iftiqār — not as separate clauses, but as a single system in which each element presupposes the others.

Appendix: References and Sources

The Initiative refers to the main text of the Charter of Salvation and State-Building (Eighth Revision, September 2026) and to the Activation Protocol (documented version, September 2026) by the numbers of their sections and chapters. The sources for the external facts cited in it are as follows:

● The Dismantling of the 30 June 1989 Regime and Removal of Empowerment Act, 2019 (passed on 28 November 2019), which provided for the dissolution of the National Congress Party.
● The Constitutional Document for the Transitional Period, 2019 (August 2019), which set the transitional period at thirty-nine months.
● United Nations Security Council Resolution 1593 (31 March 2005), referring the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court.
● Sudan Tribune, investigative report on the "cartel" of armed levies on roads and crossings, 29 July 2026; and the article accompanying the Activation Protocol, "The Gateway Economy".
● The Rabat Plan of Action on the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2012).
● The attached interactive model (Excel file: Regional Representation Formula).

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