An important step towards peace: The Sudanese interim government and the most important rebel group started peace talks on Sunday.
The Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu, and the government signed a document that guarantees freedom to practice religion while separating religion and state.
This paves the way for a final peace agreement.
This brings the transitional government under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan one step closer to its goal of reaching an agreement with all rebel groups across the country and ending the decades-long conflicts that have resulted in millions of displaced persons and hundreds of thousands of dead.
In April 2019, the Sudanese interim government overthrew the longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir after almost three decades in power.
At the beginning of the year there had been heavy fighting in the Darfur region.
UN: A step towards "comprehensive peace"
The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Sudan, Volker Perthes, welcomed the development and called it in a tweet "an important step towards a comprehensive peace in Sudan".
Last year there had already been peace agreements with many rebel groups, including from the western region of Darfur.
But the key faction led by al-Hilu had not signed up to the agreement - they stuck to their demand that Sudan should renounce Sharia law and become a secular, democratic state.
al-Hilu group calls for secular state
The al-Hilu movement is the largest rebel group in Sudan and is active in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan provinces, where they control large parts of the country.
The rebels are calling for a secular state in which religion does not play a role in legislation, the dissolution of all militias led by ex-head of state Omar al-Bashir and the restructuring of the military.
In the provinces held by the rebels, a large proportion of the population is Christian and has been attacked by al-Bashir's Islamist government in the north of the country.
caw / AP / Reuters