The African Union (AU) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) often appear "satisfied" with fragile peace agreements—even when civilians continue to die—because these agreements fulfill their immediate, high-priority mandate: achieving a ceasefire and preventing regional spillover.

This pragmatic approach is driven by the limits of their authority and capacity, leading them to prioritize elite bargains over the messy, long-term work of civilian protection and democratic institution-building.

This dynamic creates a disconnect where a signed document, however flawed, is deemed a diplomatic success, even if violence persists on the ground.

1. The Primacy of "Ceasefire Diplomacy"

The core objective of regional bodies like IGAD and continental bodies like the AU is to achieve a cessation of hostilities and restore a minimal level of regional stability.

• Preventing Spillover: The highest concern for IGAD member states (especially those bordering conflict zones like South Sudan or Sudan) is instability migration—the massive influx of refugees and the potential for the conflict to metastasize across their own borders, involving their own ethnic groups or militias. A signed peace agreement, even a "shaky peace," is the first and most critical step in containing this threat.

• Defining Success Down: For mediators, a successful outcome is often defined as achieving a Revitalized Peace Agreement (like R-ARCSS in South Sudan) or a cessation of hostilities (like the early Jeddah talks on Sudan). These agreements are celebrated as diplomatic victories because they shift the conflict from an active war footing to a political dispute, giving the region something to monitor and manage, rather than an uncontained disaster to fear.

• The Power-Sharing Fix: AU and IGAD mediators are acutely aware that the conflict is fundamentally a power struggle between two armed factions (e.g., Kiir vs. Machar in South Sudan, or SAF vs. RSF in Sudan). The quickest way to secure a ceasefire is to satisfy the transactional interests of the warlords by offering them a guaranteed share of the state's power, wealth, and positions—an elite bargain that temporarily resolves the military conflict by legalizing the spoils.

2. Institutional and Enforcement Limitations

The AU and IGAD are structured as diplomatic forums of sovereign states, not as bodies with the independent power to compel compliance or enforce civilian protection.

• Lack of Enforcement Capacity: Neither the AU nor IGAD possesses a standing, independently funded military force (like NATO) capable of enforcing a robust peace, protecting civilians, or imposing sanctions on non-compliant generals. Deployment of an African Standby Force (ASF) remains conceptual or reliant on external funding, slowing down any decisive action. The AU is a diplomatic body first, and a security provider second.

• The Sovereignty Trap: The AU's founding principle of sovereignty and non-interference acts as a powerful brake on intervention. While the "non-indifference" principle exists, deploying troops or imposing meaningful sanctions against a suspended member state, such as Sudan, requires a political consensus that is almost impossible to achieve among heads of state wary of creating a precedent that could be used against them.

• Forum Shopping and External Sabotage: Generals like Sudan's Burhan or South Sudan's Kiir are adept at "forum shopping," shifting between IGAD, AU, and external mediation tracks (like the US/Saudi-led Jeddah talks) to stall progress or secure a more favorable outcome. Furthermore, external actors (like the UAE or Egypt) who provide arms and financing to the warring parties often undermine the enforcement efforts of AU/IGAD by providing the warlords with the military confidence and financial independence to ignore regional pressure.

3. Political Expediency Over Root Causes

The pressure for a quick solution, combined with the structural limitations, forces mediators to overlook the deeper, more complex issues of governance and accountability.

• Marginalizing Civil Society: The resulting peace agreements are often criticized for their limited inclusivity. They are essentially pacts between warring parties that fail to incorporate the voices of civil society, women's groups, and youth movements. By prioritizing the demands of the military elites, the mediators neglect the root causes of the conflict—poor governance, ethnic marginalization, and lack of justice—which inevitably leads to renewed violence at the grassroots level.

• Stalling Justice and Accountability: Provisions for transitional justice (such as the Hybrid Court in South Sudan) are routinely stalled or ignored by the political elites who signed the agreement. The AU/IGAD often tolerate these delays because forcing the issue of accountability would threaten the entire fragile peace deal and restart the national conflict, thus failing the primary objective of regional stability.

• The Focus on Technicalities: In the absence of decisive political will, the peace process often devolves into debates over technical implementation: how many forces are unified, what percentage of positions each faction receives, or the timeline for a new constitution. While these steps are necessary, they move at a snail's pace while the war's causes—militia violence, displacement, and ethnic targeting—continue swiftly because they are military-tactical tools being deployed on the ground.

Ultimately, the AU and IGAD prioritize the cessation of fighting because it is the only measurable success they can politically and institutionally achieve. The persistence of civilian deaths is viewed as an implementation failure of the peace deal, rather than a total diplomatic failure, because the alternative—a full-scale, uncontained regional war—is deemed a far greater threat.