Sudan and Saudi Arabia are moving to revive talks on delimiting their maritime border, even as war continues to devastate Sudan.
Sudan has been at war since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The fighting has destroyed infrastructure and caused what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Despite the war, the two countries are pressing ahead with a maritime boundary file that has remained unresolved for more than half a century.
Critics argue that with Sudan deeply divided and without a constitutional government, a binding treaty affecting future generations and the country’s sovereign rights is being pursued without input or ratification from a Sudanese parliament. Sudanese political analyst Ammar Siddiq told The Standard that without elected legislative institutions, al-Burhan has no constitutional mandate to finalise agreements of this scale on his own.
Stay ahead of the geopolitical week.
MD Briefing delivers expert analysis across five global fronts — the Indo-Pacific, energy, geoeconomics, European security, and the Middle East — every Monday morning. Free.
A half-century wait and sudden
The dispute dates back to the 1960s, when valuable mineral deposits were found beneath the seabed between the Saudi and Sudanese coasts.
In May 1974, the two countries signed an agreement to regulate the exploitation of these resources. Under the agreement, Sudan holds exclusive sovereign rights over the seabed extending eastward from its coast to the point where the water is 1,000 metres deep, and Saudi Arabia holds the same rights off its own coast. The area between the two forms a common zone in which both countries have equal rights.
The 1974 deal managed economic exploitation rather than settling a final border. It set up a Saudi-Sudanese Red Sea Joint Commission to oversee exploration, which was funded primarily by the Saudi government.
The two governments announced plans in 2019 to revive the agreement. A joint committee met on September 20, 2025, to discuss amendments to a final draft, The Standard reported. In October 2025, al-Burhan postponed the final agreement until Sudan settled its own maritime and land border with Egypt, according to the same report.
Critics ask why the arrangement was never turned into a formal boundary. They also question whether Saudi Arabia, the wealthier and more technically capable partner, stands to gain disproportionately if the terms are settled under current conditions.
The mineral reserves in the common zone are estimated to be worth billions of dollars, according to economists at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
.
Al-Burhan at the Centre of the New Delimitation Drive
Al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto ruler, appears increasingly willing to finalise the maritime border deal despite questions over his legitimacy and the war in his country. Saudi Arabia is among the army’s main foreign backers, the Irish Times reported. Analysts say al-Burhan is seeking Saudi financial and military support to sustain his war effort.
Foreign affairs journalist Graham Matthews argued in Modern Diplomacy in August that Saudi Arabia is emerging as the main regional underwriter of al-Burhan’s effort to turn battlefield gains into a political settlement on his own terms.
On September 14, 2026, al-Burhan chaired a meeting of a Sudanese committee working within the financial and investment framework of the Saudi-Sudanese Supreme Council for Strategic Cooperation and Coordination. The two countries’ foreign ministers signed the council’s founding agreement in Riyadh on August 17, according to the Sudan News Agency.
The meeting named the Sea Ports Corporation as the main federal agency coordinating civilian and military bodies. It gave the corporation’s executive secretariat direct access to historical maps and archival documents on the Red Sea and maritime borders.
The meeting also agreed to create a technical committee of the National Boundary Commission and the Sudanese Navy to review legal frameworks and draft a technical delimitation plan. It approved the development of national maritime monitoring centres in coordination with Saudi Arabia’s ports of Jeddah and Yanbu.
Eight days later, on September 22, US State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement that neither the SAF nor the RSF, nor their leaders, represent legitimate, constitutional governance for Sudan. Sudan’s Foreign Ministry rejected the statement the following day, Middle East Monitor reported.
Sudan restarted legal preparations for delimiting its maritime baselines in February 2025, drawing on submissions it made to the United Nations in 2017. That year, Khartoum formally objected to the 2016 maritime boundary agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia over its link to the disputed Halayeb Triangle, and Egypt rejected Sudan’s claim in a declaration to the UN in December 2017.
Shift in Red Sea Dynamics and Sovereign Risks
The push comes amid intensified regional rivalry over maritime security, energy routes and port access across the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Saudi Arabia is expanding its influence on both shores, while the authority in Port Sudan relies heavily on outside political and financial support.
Talks between the two governments have moved toward maritime management and economic jurisdiction, with the Supreme Council for Strategic Cooperation and Coordination playing a growing role in relations between Riyadh and al-Burhan’s administration.
The technical work has raised concern inside Sudan. With no elected legislature to review or ratify international treaties, questions remain over the legal validity of any final, binding border agreement signed during a civil war.
