A regional ceasefire has held into its third week, allowing aid convoys to reach previously cut-off areas while mediators push for a permanent settlement before the current truce expires. The ceasefire, brokered by a coalition of regional powers with technical support from international agencies, is the longest pause in active hostilities in nearly two years.
Humanitarian agencies have used the window to restock medical facilities, resume vaccination campaigns, and begin the slow work of clearing unexploded ordnance from residential areas. Civilian movement has resumed along several key roads for the first time in months, with families travelling to check on relatives and survey damaged homes.
What has been achieved
Aid coordinators describe the past three weeks as the most productive humanitarian window since the conflict began. Roughly 3,400 metric tonnes of food and medical supplies have entered previously inaccessible districts, and over 90,000 children have received vaccinations that were overdue, in some cases by more than a year. Three damaged hospitals have been partially restored to function, including one that had been operating from a basement using portable generators for the past nine months.
Critically, the ceasefire has also allowed the exchange of remains, the documentation of damaged civilian infrastructure, and the partial restoration of mobile-phone service in border areas. These are the kinds of incremental gains that rarely make headlines but that, together, begin to make daily life possible again.
What remains unresolved
Diplomats caution that the harder issues — border demarcation, the prisoner-exchange framework, and external security guarantees — remain unresolved. Two earlier rounds of talks broke down over what mediators describe as "sequencing" disputes: each side wants the other to take the first concrete step on the most politically sensitive items, and neither has yet been willing to do so.
A further complication is the role of third-party guarantors. Both sides have demanded credible external commitments to enforce any permanent agreement, but the international actors most likely to provide such guarantees have been reluctant to take on open-ended obligations. One mediator described the situation as "a search for a guarantor that everyone trusts but that no one has yet been able to name."
What happens next
A further round of talks is expected at a neutral venue later this month. Mediators have indicated they will push for an extension of the ceasefire regardless of progress on the harder issues, on the grounds that even a temporary continuation of the humanitarian window is valuable in its own right. Both sides have privately signalled openness to such an extension, though neither has committed publicly.
For now, the cautious optimism on the ground is tempered by exhaustion. "We are not celebrating," one local aid worker said. "We are catching up. There is a difference."