Letter
Letter to Secretary of State Blinken on the Conflict in Sudan, June 27, 2024
June 27, 2024
The Honorable Antony J. Blinken
Secretary of State
United States Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520
-transmitted via email-
Dear Secretary Blinken:
As Chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops I join my deep concern and prayers to those expressed by His Holiness Pope Francis for peace in Sudan and urgent relief to the extreme level of suffering that continues. We recognize the important role that the Special Envoy Mr. Tom Perriello is playing in Sudan, in the IGAD countries, and in the Middle East to address the conflict and bring it to an end.
The people who lead this violence are entrenched in their interests and goals. Powerful outside forces pursue their national interests in the conflict and play a huge role in fueling the violence with arms and other support. The resulting toll of misery, now up to 10 million internally displaced people and refugees, increases daily.
I urge you, Special Envoy Tom Perriello, the UN, the other donor countries, and IGAD to keep hope alive in Sudan by,
- Finding and utilizing all the incentives, negative as well as positive, to persuade the Sudan Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces leaders to end this civil war,
- Encouraging the relevant foreign leaders and powers to end their military support and to use their influence on Sudanese leaders to negotiate an end to the fighting,
- Promoting the creation of a transitional government led as much as possible by the civil society leaders who launched their peaceful resistance to the former regime,
- Assisting the transitional government to engineer a rapid construction of the democratic institutions needed to hold free and fair elections and govern for the common good,
- Enlisting the active collaboration of all donor and partner nations towards these ends and,
- Working assiduously to increase humanitarian access to deliver assistance to the huge number of people who are displaced or refugees.
We will keep you, your colleagues at State Department, and the Special Envoy in our prayers as well as the troubled people of Sudan.
Sincerely yours,
The Most Reverend A. Elias Zaidan
Bishop of Maronite Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon
Chairman, Committee on International Justice and Peace