Peace in Sudan

Could you send human rights monitors to the region

The problem of Darfur

On June 27, the Brookings Institution hosted a panel of experts to discuss the progress and impediments to the Sudanese Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) as Sudan prepares for its 2009 elections.

 The January 2005 agreement between the Republic of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) negotiated a timeframe for settlements between the North and South. The CPA addresses several issues, among them armed forces, granting separate armed forces to each region and gradual troop withdrawal on both sides. It provides for Southern autonomy until its secession or unification with the North is determined by a referendum set for 2011, and guarantees that oil wealth is divided evenly between the Khartoum government and the SPLM.  Establishing dual currency and banking systems as well as separate national flags, the agreement also establishes a transitional administration giving the Republic of Sudan a 70:30 majority, making the split 55:45 in the oil-rich region of Abyei, over which multiple political contenders are vying for control, leading to increased violence and heightened concerns over government human rights violations.  Additionally, the CPA allows Shari’a to remain in practice in the North, and establishes constitutional adjustments ensuring that Shari’a does not apply to non-Muslims.

The panel included a both a former and current Sudanese government official, a State Department official, and a representative from Amnesty International.  Khalid Koser, a Brookings Fellow in Humanitarian Issues and Deputy Director of the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, introduced and moderated the event.  Dr. Koser previously served as Senior Policy Analyst at the Global Commission on International Migration and lectures in Human Geography at University College London.  He specializes in forced migration, focusing on internal displacement, asylum policies and practice, refugee repatriation, and migrant smuggling.

Dr. Mudawi El-Turabi of the government of Sudan was the first panelist to speak.  A Member of Parliament, he serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee for Defense & Security.  The first to speak, Dr. El-Turabi emphasized that “the problem of Darfur has overshadowed the peace process,” attributing slow progress in scheduling free and fair elections to the conditionality of peace in Darfur before Sudan can become eligible for large sums of promised international aid. Multiple divisions in the opposing factions that comprise the Darfur region mean that the Sudanese government has no official Darfurian entity with whom it can negotiate and no defined political agenda with which to work.  Until a certain degree of political unity is achieved, El-Turabi maintained, it is impossible to create the infrastructural stability necessary to fairly represent Darfurians in a national election.  The two objectives of the CPA: achieving peace and transforming Sudan’s system of governance into a democracy, must be tackled simultaneously and with collaboration from Sudan’s international supporters.

Pamela Fierst, of the U.S. Department of State, who followed El-Turabi’s remarks, agreed that “security is an issue that must work in tandem with our efforts toward democratization.” But, she added, “neither can be sacrificed.”  Fierst, the senior Sudan Desk officer in the Africa Bureau’s Sudan Programs Group (SPG), frequently advises both public and private entities on improving U.S. interactions in the region.  Her current responsibilities at SPG include preparations for Sudan’s 2009 national elections and as such, she expressed deep concern over impediments in efforts to ensure Darfurians’ electoral voice is heard.  Failure to de-marginalize Darfurians prior to the election, she warned, would lead to further exclusion which would only further silence their voices. During this critical period leading up to the election, Fierst emphasized that effective implementation of the CPA “is important now, more than at any time since its signing.”

Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin, who served as Sudan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2005-2007, followed Fierst.  Dr. Ajawin is a lecturer at Khartoum University and a member of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), a predominantly southern and Christian political party established with the aim of creating a secular and democratic Sudan.  Though many southern Sudanese advocate independence, the SPLM pushes for unity under a confederal system and was a chief proponent of the CPA along with the National Congress Party (NCP).  Ajawin addressed first the complexity of the issues the CPA tackles, reminding his audience that the eleven years it took to negotiate were “indicative of the fact that it is addressing a complicated problem.” Success in identifying key underlying issues was achieved, he said, with the 2002 Machakos Protocol which reached a compromise granting self-determination to the South and allowing Shari’a to remain in implementation in the North. He reiterated throughout the discussion that the parties who negotiated the CPA committed themselves to a united Sudan, but had been encumbered from the beginning by the fact that the CPA was never an open-ended agreement and brought with it deadlines with which external circumstances such as the instability in Darfur, and in Abyei, the area in which CPA implementation has seen the least success, frequently interfered. Securing the region, a necessary condition for implementation, is impossible without international assistance.

Lynn Fredricksson , Advocacy Director for Africa for Amnesty International, the final panelist to weigh in, got a laugh out of the others by qualifying her comments as “constructive criticism…otherwise I wouldn’t be Amnesty International.”  Fredricksson, who has served as a human rights consultant for several organizations working in Africa and Southeast Asia, presented eight points of concern.  The first five primarily emphasized the behavior of the Sudanese government with regard to the following:

First, she addressed the need for effective provision of humanitarian aid and full accountability for atrocities committed in Darfur. Next, Fredricksson highlighted Amnesty International’s concern over violations of freedom of media and personal expression. The need for legal reforms in Sudan, including media, military, and police laws was the next topic she listed. Al-Turabi had earlier addressed this issue as a work in progress in the National Assembly. Finally, she demanded thorough investigation of government abuses committed during arrests and detentions and further attention to the rights of displaced persons, especially with concern for the recent large influx to Ethiopia, N. Uganda, and Kenya, and concern over the lack of implementation of the 2006 Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement (ESPA).  Fredricksson, like the other panelists, also highlighted the lack of international perspective on the relationship between the deteriorating situation in Darfur and the electoral process, insisting that without sustained international attention to implementation, investment, and monitoring, the CPA expectations for the CPA’s effectiveness will remain low.  Her final point called on the U.S. government to assume a more active role in mitigating the humanitarian concerns in the region.

The audience numbered over 130, including U.S. academics and policymakers as well as representatives of Sudanese political factions and lobby groups present in Washington.  Following the panelists’ presentations, they fielded questions from the audience which centered primarily on the major issues addressed during the panel discussion, from international cooperation to the question of unification. Colin Thomas-Jensen, a policy adviser in the crowd, raised the point that recent polling indicates 90 percent of Southern Sudanese would vote for independence, asking Ajawin what that number means to SPLM policymakers in their efforts to unify Sudan.  Ajawin’s response once again highlighted complications with mobilizing an electorate experiencing severe civil unrest - “We want to make the unity of Sudan attractive to those who will vote for it. Those are the Southern Sudanese.”  From a government official’s perspective, the incentives to de-marginalize populations in conflict-engulfed regions like Darfur are diminished.  The domestic political landscape, without international cooperation, leaves little flexibility.  Early in the discussion, Ajawin stated, “at the end of the day, what the common man wants to see is that there is a difference between war and peace. Peace for the common man, means that there are services,” services Sudanese officials argue they cannot provide with the limited means available to them. In this vein, he continued, the Sudanese government would welcome international support from other governments and non-profit organizations in order to help secure the population.  Closing the event with a stark reminder of disconnect between those operating from within and outside of the Sudanese political system, Fredricksson responded several minutes later that Amnesty International would be more than happy to send human rights monitors to the region