1. Country overview

Sudan has been affected by an armed conflict since April 2023, when fighting broke out in Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as well as their respective allied militia groups, before spreading to other parts of the country.5

By the end of 2025, two de facto governments have been established in Sudan: the official one, the Government of Hope led by the SAF in Port Sudan, and a self-proclaimed one, the Government of Peace and Unity, established in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, by the RSF. Each administration was nominally civilian but remained militarily controlled.6 Governance became increasingly fragmented, with taxation, authority and administrative systems operating outside the traditional unified national framework in the areas controlled by the RSF.7

In May 2025, Sudan’s army chief and Chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC), General al-Burhan, appointed Kamil Idris as prime minister,8 ending the period since Abdalla Hamdok’s resignation in 2022 during which Sudan operated without a prime minister.9 Idris was tasked to head a 22-member ‘non-partisan technocratic government’10 and he gradually formed its cabinet over several months.11

The formation process was constrained by pressure from armed groups signatories to the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement (JPA).12 Armed group leaders threatened to withdraw their alliance with the SAF if removed from office. Following mediation, the commanders of the Joint Forces - an alliance of Darfur-based armed groups that signed the JPA and subsequently aligned themselves with the SAF some months after the beginning of the conflict13 - retained the Finance, Mining, and Social Development portfolios. The Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC) – established in 2019 as a joint military-civilian legislative body for a 3-year transitional period and subsequently reconstituted following the 2021 coup14 – proceeded with appointing the Ministers of Defence and Interior.15 The composition of the cabinet drew criticism from Sudanese political and civilian actors for ‘lacking broad representation’16 and due to several ministerial appointments being linked to the former ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and Sudan’s Islamist Movement.17 This raised concerns about both the return to positions of influence of figures associated with the al Bashir era (1989-2019) and the exclusion of pro-democracy forces.18 In January 2026, the newly appointed Sudan prime minister, Kamil Idris, announced the official return of the national institutions to the capital, Khartoum,19 nearly three years after the national government had relocated to Port Sudan.20

In 2025, the Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC) 21 amended the Constitutional Charter signed in 2019. 22 The new Constitutional Document came into force after being published in the Official Gazette on 23 February 2025.23 Reported amendments included extending the transitional period by 39 months, eliminating all references to the RSF and the SAF,24 assigning the army a majority representation on the TSC,25 and delaying the transition to civilian rule.26 The changes also reportedly prohibited holders of foreign nationality from government positions and removed references to the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), a coalition of political parties, unions and civil society organisations 27 that opposed former president Omar al-Bashir in 2019 28 and subsequently evolved including through a split in 2021.29

The amendments further stipulated that Sudan’s foreign policy would be formulated and implemented under the supervision of the TSC. A legal commentator deemed these measures as ‘illegitimate, and entirely unconstitutional’, arguing they consolidated military control over legislative, executive and judicial powers and granted military leaders immunity from accountability for actions spanning from the General Command sit-in dispersal in 201930 to the ongoing war.31 According to Ayin Network, a Sudanese media network of Sudanese journalists, the constitutional amendments granted Al-Burhan – the head of Sudan’s TSC and commander of the SAF – and the military, extensive powers over all state institutions, including authority to appoint the Chief Justice, Supreme Court justices, the Prime Minister and his cabinet, as well as the Auditor General.32

Corruption levels in Sudan remained extremely high, as reflected in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), where the country’s score declined from 1533 to 14 out of 100 in 2025, compared with the previous year, ranking 175 out of 182 countries.34 This positioned the country well below the sub-Saharan regional average and indicated a continued decline between 2022 and 2025.35

Reporting by Transparency International (TI) indicated that corruption within institutions aligned with Sudan’s authorities was both publicly acknowledged by senior officials and embedded in governance structures.36 Complaints about administrative corruption, including bribery and illegal fees imposed by military personnel and officials, could trigger repression rather than accountability according to a Sudanese writer.37

In 2025, the RSF established a parallel self-proclaimed government38 in the areas under its control, namely most of Darfur and parts of Kordofan and Blue Nile states.39 For additional information on territorial control see Section 1.1.3. of the EUAA Sudan: Security Situation report (February 2025).

In February 2025, it called for the signing of a founding charter in Nairobi,40 an initiative supported by a coalition of armed movements from Darfur and Kordofan,41 including the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) and other groups.42 Later, in March 2025, the RSF unilaterally proclaimed the ‘Government of Peace and Unity’,43 commonly referred to as ‘the Taasis State’,44 with the signing of a transitional constitution.45 The document called for the abolition of the 2019 Constitutional document and all preceding laws and for the establishment of a secular state,46 organised into federal, regional, and local levels.47 It mandated military reforms, dissolved militias, and ensured equal citizenship, while granting regions self-determination. The document outlined a governance structure with a transitional phase leading to elections, without any fixed timetable.48 It also called for a single national army, with the signatories as the ‘nucleus’.49

The RSF parallel government has not received international recognition. The African Union urged its members to not recognise the RSF parallel government and reaffirmed its support for the Sudan’s transitional government formed in May 2025. 50 The UN security council rejected the RSF declaration of a parallel administration51 and the United Nations Secretary-General expressed concern about the signing of the RSF charter, noting that it risked fragmenting the country and further entrenching the crisis. Other international actors expressed similar concerns.52

Within the time constraints of this report, only limited information on the implementation of RSF civil administrations in areas under its control could be found among the sources consulted.

According to the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) report that investigated governance dynamics in Sudan's borderlands, including through interviews with local informants conducted between February and April 2025, the RSF approaches to civil administration varied across southern and western regions. These ranged from co-opting and rebranding ‘pre-existing state bureaucracy’, adopting ‘informal practices’ based on ‘loyalty, kinship, and economic pragmatism’ or implementing a ‘hybrid governance’ as a combination of the two. ‘RSF efforts remain fluid and uneven, often relying on violence and coercion’ with authority grounded in ‘perceived legitimacy, relational power, and negotiated tolerance by local actors’ rather than formal rules, accompanied by ‘varying degrees of military oversight and opportunistic revenue extraction.’53

The RSF has established governance bodies tasked with implementing border policy and acting as state-level counterparts to Chadian authorities. In West Darfur, the RSF West Darfur Civil Administration, formed in 2024, has replaced the former state government and issued movement permits mirroring the official government’s visas, custom duties and travel permits. This included entry permits for UN and NGO staff (valid for six months, extendable) allowing entry and movement in El Geneina (West Darfur) from Chad, 15-days commodity permits for goods and commercial vehicles, and 15-days travel permits to move across West Darfur localities. The RSF West Darfur Area Command coordinated with Chadian authorities on police and border security and worked with the RSF Civil Administration and Chambers of Commerce on economic issues. In early 2025, the RSF revealed the intention to establish a joint border unit with Chad aimed at safeguarding livestock and commercial activities; however this initiative had not yet been implemented as of February 2025.54 At the beginning of 2026, the civilian administration in East Darfur state announced the establishment of ‘the region’s first banking institution’ to address the lack of banking and online banking services in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.55