The Situation in Abyei: Deteriorating Security, Diplomatic Obstruction, and the Limits of PSC Authority

The Peace and Security Council (PSC) 8 July session on Abyei will be the first Council engagement with the situation in the disputed territory since the 1108th session of September 2022 — a gap of nearly four years that has allowed the security situation to deteriorate significantly in the absence of structured multilateral attention. The intervening period has seen the outbreak of Sudan's civil war, the progressive destabilisation of South Sudan's fragile political environment, and a sharp escalation in violence on the ground in Abyei itself. The session is long overdue. Its capacity to produce meaningful outcomes is constrained by a diplomatic obstruction dynamic that the Council must address directly rather than circumvent.

The security situation in Abyei has deteriorated sharply over the past six months. UNISFA recorded 196 security incidents and 58 fatalities during this period — a sharp increase compared with the preceding six-month baseline. South Sudan People's Defence Forces and police have maintained unauthorised checkpoints and continued occupying civilian infrastructure in southern Abyei. Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) maintain a presence around Goli and Diffra in northern Abyei that represents a direct and documented extension of Sudan's civil war into a territory whose special status is supposed to insulate it from exactly this kind of external armed actor penetration.

The RSF's presence in northern Abyei is analytically significant beyond its immediate security consequences. The RSF is one of the two principal belligerents in Sudan's civil war. Its presence in Abyei introduces an armed actor whose command, financing, and operational objectives are determined by the dynamics of Sudan's internal conflict rather than by any framework applicable to Abyei's special status. The Abyei area cannot be stabilised through instruments designed for the Abyei conflict if one of the primary sources of insecurity is an armed actor operating under a completely different strategic logic.

Sudan's diplomatic obstruction represents the most immediate institutional challenge for the 8 July session. The background to this obstruction is specific and consequential. When the PSC attempted to schedule an informal consultation and briefing on Abyei in March 2024, Sudan's representative in Addis Ababa declined the diplomatic invitation, submitted a formal letter requesting the PSC to refrain from proceeding with its planned engagement, and called for the removal of the Abyei issue from the PSC agenda entirely.

This obstruction is legally and procedurally invalid. The PSC Protocol clearly establishes that no country may oppose the inclusion of an agenda item before the Council. Sudan's request to remove Abyei from the PSC agenda has no standing under the institutional framework that governs the Council's operations. That it succeeded — through a combination of informal diplomatic pressure and the procedural complications of Sudan's suspended status — in delaying the Council's engagement for sixteen months is a damaging precedent whose effects on the PSC's institutional authority extend well beyond the Abyei file.

Sudan remains suspended from participating in AU activities following the outbreak of the April 2023 war. This suspension complicates but does not eliminate the PSC's authority to address Abyei. Abyei is a disputed territory whose final status is the subject of unresolved international obligations that exist independently of Sudan's current conflict and independently of Sudan's suspended AU membership. The PSC's obligation to address the security and humanitarian situation in Abyei does not require Sudan's consent, participation, or approval. It requires only that the Council exercise the institutional authority that the PSC Protocol grants it.

The relationship between Sudan and South Sudan — the bilateral relationship within which Abyei's final status must ultimately be resolved — has been fundamentally altered by Sudan's civil war. The institutional infrastructure through which Sudan-South Sudan relations were managed — the High-Level Implementation Panel, the Joint Political and Security Mechanism, and the technical bodies associated with the 2012 Cooperation Agreements — has been disrupted or suspended. South Sudan's own political fragility, compounded by the economic pressures of its petroleum transit dependency on Sudan, means that Juba's capacity to advance Abyei's final status resolution is further reduced now when the security situation most requires it.

For the 8 July session, ASA identifies five issues that the PSC must address beyond the agenda items identified in the 1108th session communiqué of September 2022.

The RSF's presence in northern Abyei must be addressed explicitly as a new and distinct security threat that is categorically different from the community-level tensions and inter-tribal conflict that dominated the pre-2023 security assessment. The 8 July communiqué should specifically call for the RSF's withdrawal from Abyei and establish a monitoring mechanism for compliance.

UNISFA's mandate and resource adequacy must be assessed against the new security environment. A mission whose mandate was designed for a pre-war threat environment faces a qualitatively different challenge when one of the parties to Sudan's civil war is operating in its area of responsibility. The Council should request a formal mandate review that accounts for the current threat environment rather than the threat environment of UNISFA's original design.

South Sudan's unauthorised military and police presence in southern Abyei must be addressed without the diplomatic softening that has characterised previous Council engagement with Juba on this issue. Unauthorised checkpoints and the occupation of civilian infrastructure by SSPDF and police are documented violations of the Abyei Protocol whose continuation the PSC has an institutional obligation to address.

The humanitarian dimension of deteriorating Abyei security must be assessed independently, with specific attention to the civilian population's access to food, medical services, and freedom of movement — all of which are affected by the unauthorised checkpoints and armed actor presence documented in UNISFA's reporting.

The 8 July session must establish a clear calendar for the next Council engagement on Abyei. A four-year gap between substantive sessions on a disputed territory with rising violence and active unauthorised military presence by both neighbouring states is institutionally indefensible.