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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 03/04
Sudan: Towards an Incomplete Peace
December 2003
Abstract
With the signing on 25 September 2003 of a framework agreement on security arrangements, the Sudanese government and the insurgent Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLA) are closer to peace than at any time in the past twenty years. However, considerable hurdles remain before any final deal is signed, and a separate, intensifying war in the west already threatens to undermine it. As the parties press forward with the last phases of negotiation, the international community's engagement should intensify in support of the final deal, in preparation for helping with implementation if successful, and in ensuring coordination between the main peace process and the conflict in the west.
While immense progress has been made on the main conflict, that between the government and the SPLA, the situation in the western province of Darfur is rapidly deteriorating, and yet another war threatens in the east. Even a comprehensive government-SPLA agreement is potentially jeopardised by an inability to agree on terms for three contested areas: the Nuba Mountains, Abyei, and Southern Blue Nile, all in the centre of the country, close to the historic north-south boundary. Most disturbing are increasing reports of major human rights violations in the west, where some 600,000 persons have been displaced in what resembles the government's strategy in the oilfields over the last four years.
