CAIRO, July 7 (Xinhua) -- The conference for Sudanese political parties and civilian groups concluded late Saturday in Egypt's capital Cairo with a consensus on forming a committee for peace-making in war-torn Sudan.
"The conferees agreed to form a committee to push forward discussions and follow up on relevant efforts to reach lasting peace (in Sudan)," said a concluding statement released Sunday by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Emigration and Egyptian Expatriates, the sponsor of the meeting.
The statement stressed that "the conferees agreed to preserve Sudan as a unified homeland, on the foundations of citizenship, equal rights, and a civil, democratic, and federal state."
The Cairo meeting brought together for the first time Sudan's civilian parties in the political arena since the onset of the conflict in the country in mid-April last year, according to the statement.
The conference, themed "Together to Stop the War in Sudan," was held at the call of Egypt to address the crisis in Sudan resulting from the persistent conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The deadly conflict had claimed at least 16,650 lives by early May 2024, according to a watchdog update cited by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in a report in late June.
The UN International Organization for Migration estimated that over 7.7 million people in Sudan have been internally displaced amid the conflict, while about 2.2 million others have crossed borders into neighboring countries.
According to official Egyptian figures released in March, about 500,000 Sudanese had fled to Egypt since the beginning of the war. ■
