3. Making peace and justice count for people’s daily lives International discourse and practice on transitional justice tends to be dominated by a focus on formal processes and institutions despite pledges to be context-specific and victim-centred. In charged political post-war or post-authoritarian contexts, transitional justice processes are often reduced to seemingly technical exercises of consultations, reports, legislation, and commissions. 16 Professional, systematic exercises are needed, but should not obscure the inherently political nature of transitional justice. Similarly, an excessive focus on international justice mechanisms like the International Criminal Court(ICC) or large-scale truth and reconciliation commissions runs the risk of running outside of the reality in fragile settings and the actual needs and experiences of affected populations. 17 After all, the ICC has delivered only one verdict in the situation of Sudan, in October 2025, relating to events more than two decades prior. 18 Despite pledging to do so, the ICC prosecutor has not issued any further arrest warrants beyond the five legacy ones since the April 2023 war began. Seeing perpetrators being punished may help people’s sense of justice, but the clinical court chambers in The Hague remain distant from the scenes of mass atrocities in Darfur or Khartoum. Hybrid tribunals either in­country or in the region may provide a bridge there. 19 An everyday sense of transitional justice needs to include restorative elements. These can be formal apologies, community-led processes or memorials as physical symbols of acknowledgement and collective mourning. Furthermore, no transitional justice process can be effective if people’s ordinary access to impartial, independent and effective justice is not restored- or established in the first place, given that Sudan has been plagued by the denial of rights. Restorative justice is a crucial element to keep societies together. A justice-based approach to peace focuses on the reduction of harm to individuals and communities. In contrast to some elite bargains that simply redefine what counts as armed conflict or criminal violence, 20 peace needs to improve the human security of the population. Justice needs to include not just civic and political rights, but also the right to food, water and healthcare. On a discursive level, an everyday approach to peace and justice needs to prevent the manipulation of reality as often practiced by some elites in the context of war. Instead, what is needed is an acknowledgement of complex and difficult experiences beyond a centralized understanding of history. For example, for some communities, e.g. in the Nuba mountains, war started much earlier than in April 2023. 4. Contributions by civil society to transitional justice efforts in times of war In this context, we can identify several threads how civic actors are already contributing to such an everyday sense of transitional justice despite the ongoing war. The first thread is the evidentiary one. Doctors, lawyers, and researchers have sustained a chain of custody for facts—documenting killings, enforced disappearances, conflict-related sexual violence, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors has maintained fatality tallies since the 2021 coup; legal groups compile affidavits, medical reports, metadata and geolocation, and burial records that can later stand up in court. 21 Community monitors in Darfur and Kordofan— often anonymous for safety—connect eyewitness testimony to satellite imagery and forensic analysis, liaising with international mechanisms to preserve material before it is lost. This is the spine of any future TJ process. The second thread is narrative harm-reduction. Hate speech and dehumanizing rhetoric spike with battlefield swings; civil society media desks and OSINT collaborators flag incitement trends, debunk rumours of imminent attacks, and issue“do-no-harm” communication packs to neighbourhood influencers in local languages. 22 The aim is modest but vital: blunt the leap from online vilification to offline violence, and remind communities—and would-be instigators—of criminal liability for incitement. The third thread is psychosocial repair. Women-led protection teams and“women’s rooms within ERR structures offer discreet counselling, accompaniment to clinics, and peer-support circles for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. Where formal services have collapsed, these nodes are often the only pathway to basic care and dignity. Faith leaders and local counsellors hold remembrance rituals that, while not formal TJ, preserve collective memory and create social space for eventual truth-telling. The fourth thread is agenda-setting. Civic coalitions have kept TJ on the diplomatic docket through alerts to the UN Human Rights Council and Security Council, calls for an expansion of the UN arms embargo and for targeted sanctions on perpetrators, and demands for evidence preservation and cooperation with the International Criminal Court as well as the UN’s Fact-Finding Mission. The through-line is consistent: cycles of impunity enabled repeat atrocities; breaking the cycle requires credible, survivor-centred pathways to justice and witness protection from the outset. The fifth thread is logistics, because justice work needs fuel and phones. ERRs and diaspora networks procure antibiotics and surgical supplies, organize evacuations across front lines, and keep El Takkaya kitchens open through pooled micro-donations. 23 Lawyers maintain The Role of Civil Society in Transitional Justice and Peace in Sudan. 3