CSW briefing on Sudan

Summary

Peace talks in Naivasha, Kenya under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) have made slow but steady progress, due largely to sustained Western, and particularly American pressure. The latest breakthrough was an agreement on wealth sharing for the six-month pre-interim period and six-year interim period prior to the holding of a southern referendum on self-determination.

However, the most intractable issues remain to be discussed. Of these, two stand out as having the potential to seriously undermine, if not destroy, prospects for a final North-South peace treaty. The first concerns future arrangements for the three marginalized areas, namely, the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile (also known as the Funj Region), and Abyei. The second involves the separation of church and state, and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army request that as the capital of a unitary state, Khartoum should be exempt from Shari’ah Law during the interim period. Unfortunately, recent pronouncements by Sudanese President El Bashir that the IGAD talks have no authority to settle the issue of the disputed territories and that the Government of Sudan (GoS) would not relinquish Shari’ah law have begun to raise doubts regarding the conclusion of a final peace treaty

Moreover, while there has been steady progress at the peace talks in Naivasha, events elsewhere in Sudan illustrate that the GoS continues to espouse repressive policies. This has occasioned concern in certain quarters regarding the true ambitions of the GoS, fuelling speculation that peace negotiations in Kenya may be a temporary necessity on the part of the government to prevent having to fight a war on several fronts.

In the north, opposition politicians, students, human rights defenders, journalists and trade unions continue to face harassment, arbitrary detention and torture. Restrictions on freedom of the press continue despite an October 2003 assurance by the president that this was at an end. Harsh and discriminatory sentences continue to be passed, such as the sentence of 100 lashes handed down to a 16 year old Dinka Christian school girl for giving birth out of wedlock.

In Darfur, where the GoS faces two armed uprisings, it is conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing involving the systematic abuse of the human rights of the African peoples of Darfur comparable to its actions during the height of its brutality in southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains. Government tactics include the bombing of civilian targets, the razing of villages by government troops and allied Arab militias, the massacre of civilians, the rape and abduction of women and children and, what many analysts are now terming the ‘systematic’ denial of humanitarian aid.

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