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Five years into the armed conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region, women and girls living in displaced persons camps, towns, and rural areas remain extremely vulnerable to sexual violence.1 Sexual violence continues to occur throughout the region, both in the context of continuing attacks on civilians, and during periods of relative calm. Those responsible are usually men from the Sudanese security forces, militias,2 rebel groups, and former rebel groups, who target women and girls predominantly (but not exclusively) from Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit, Berti, Tunjur, and other non-Arab ethnicities.

The International Center for Transitional Justice’s latest publication in our Reparative Justice Series, “Reparation and the Darfur Peace Process: Ensuring Victims’ Rights.”

Please find attached the report of the chair AU Peace and Security to the commission, dated February 28, 2008.

Please find attached a copy of SOAT’s latest briefing paper, “New Crackdown Illustrates Fragility of Media Freedoms in Sudan”.
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Latest Brief on Darfur: International Crisis Group: Dealing with current situation; what needs to be done; offering Crisis Group analysis; and other news. Good overview.

“We join with all those who have moved the world community to pay attention to Darfur and Sudan. As Elders with mlong and diverse experiences, we know the world has within its power the ability to help protect the people of Darfur from further violence, bring peace to communities torn apart, mand contribute to guiding the country toward democracy and human security. We believe that mthis power must be applied, collectively and swiftly, to end the untold suffering of millions of innocent Sudanese”. The Elders, Nov 2007

The Assessment and Evaluation Commission (AEC) Report on CPA implementation published November 3rd 2007. The AEC is tasked with monitoring and enforcing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan. Representatives from the UK embassy in Khartoum attend AEC plenary meetings, and currently chair the AEC’s security sub-committee.

The UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution to send in a peacekeeping force in July 2007 which set up the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), of more than 26,000 peacekeepers. However it will be a year before UNAMID is operational and it is already facing similar obstruction and delay by the government of Sudan as those which weakened the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS) peacekeeping force. This document considers the AMIS operation in Darfur, its weaknesses, the resources now needed and the challenges to timely deployment.

The international community needs to re-engage across the board on CPA implementation but nowhere more urgently than Abyei, where the risks of return to war are rising.

Lasting peace in Sudan requires a new strategy, one which tackles its multiple conflicts and potential conflicts in a consistent manner. The overwhelming international concentration on Darfur has come at the expense of the broader quest for peace in the country. Unless a more balanced approach is developed, Darfur will continue to suffer, and new wars are likely.

The Sudan Organisation Against Torture Newsletter for the period January - July 2007. This issue includes report on a mission to Darfur and Chad as well as offering the human rights context for this period.

The economy and culture of the Nilotic people of southern Sudan are based on cattle. Protecting that precious asset is a central concern, particularly among youth in the cattle camps. With the intensification of the southern civil war in the early 1990s, the youth of Nuerland began acquiring large numbers of modern small arms and light weapons, which allowed them to protect community property and obtain cattle and other goods from their neighbours. Another consequence of arms acquisition was the youth’s increasing involvement in broader South-South and North-South conflicts. As a result, cattle camps were transformed into a ‘white army’ that was generally aligned with the Khartoum government via the forces of Dr Riek Machar, which had broken from Dr John Garang’s mainline SPLM/A in 1991. This phenomenon was felt most strongly among the Lou Nuer of central Upper Nile, whose limited access to grazing lands forced them to regularly move their cattle into the lands of their neighbours. After the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement on 9 January 2005, the SPLM/A’s need to eliminate competing armed groups set the stage for a struggle for dominance in central Upper Nile from December 2005–May 2006. The result was the destruction of the white army resulting in the loss of many lives, the destitution of the community, and the break-down of civil order and traditional authority in Nuerland.

For years international attention in Sudan focused on the southern civil war, but the conditions of marginalization and resentment which motivated that conflict also existed in the east of the country. While dissidents in the south moved quickly to launch a rebellion and were later joined by western rebels, their counterparts in the east endeavoured to overcome their problems by political means. However, successive dictatorial regimes in Khartoum led Beja Congress (BC) politicians to move to Eritrea, join the National Democratic Alliance, and launch an armed struggle in the early 1990s. In 2005 the BC joined the Rashaida Free Lions to form the Eastern Front but weak leadership, lack of a clear political programme, poor organization, and dependence on Eritrea contributed to the failure of the military campaign. The Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement of 14 October 2006 calls for the absorption of the Eastern Front armed forces into the Sudan Armed Forces in exchange for
political positions in the national government, the national assembly, and in three eastern states. The agreement, however, largely reflects the broader regional interests of Khartoum and Asmara and is unlikely to end the marginalization that led the Eastern Front to launch its armed struggle.