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Sudanese authorities continue to commit abuses against their own people throughout Darfur, South Kordofan, Blue Nile, and other parts of the country. The government terrorizes civilian populations from the air and blocks humanitarian aid on the ground. It persecutes religious minorities and obstructs religious freedom. The Bashir regime has survived for more than 25 years in part by looting the State and its considerable resource wealth. Past policy approaches have failed to counter the regime’s ability to finance conflict at the expense of the Sudanese people.

In October, most of the existing economic sanctions were removed based on a five-track process the Obama administration negotiated with Khartoum in an effort to achieve tangible progress on a limited set of issues: partnering on counterterrorism priorities, defeating the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), ending Sudanese support to South Sudanese armed opposition groups, enacting a cessation of hostilities, and expanding humanitarian access. While the plan encompassed several critical issues, it did not get at the heart of what ails Sudan: a violent kleptocratic system that excludes many Sudanese people, especially those in periphery areas, and is the source of immense suffering.

The U.S. is currently determining its next steps related to Sudan and this bipartisan letter, which you can read here, puts forward a vision for U.S. policy where enhanced and modernized U.S. sanctions in combination with other financial tools, and appropriate incentives, are put forward tied to specific benchmarks that address the foundational issues of peace and human rights in Sudan. The letter pushes back against recent attempts to paint that the Sudanese regime of President Omar al-Bashir as evolving and moderating when in fact little has fundamentally changed in the core governance of the country.

Tell your representative to sign onto a bipartisan letter on Sudan to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.