Publications

In less than six months, the people of southern Sudan will vote in a self-determination referendum that is expected to result in the secession of the South roughly a year from now. The dynamics shaping the historic and dramatic changes in Sudan are fluid, yet some of the core issues facing southern Sudan will endure regardless of the outcome of the referendum. Because these issues are likely to be flashpoints for conflict within the South in the years to come, international actors engaged in Sudan must now closely monitor and address them during the pre-referendum period. In her last field dispatch for Enough, southern Sudan field researcher Maggie Fick identifies some of these key, lesser recognized, flashpoints.

Six months before the self-determination referenda for South Sudan and Abyei, U.S. policy is not contributing in a meaningful way to peace and justice in Sudan, whether in preventing a return to war between North and South Sudan, or in resolving the escalating conflict in Darfur. The time has come for an urgent rethink of how the United States can contribute to peace in Sudan now, building on the lessons of the recent past.

The return of Congolese refugees from neighboring Rwanda remains a particularly contentious issue here in North Kivu, eastern Congo. This Dispatch presents a closer look at some of the patterns of returns and specific types of land disputes that have emerged during the past months, and their potential to further destabilize the region.      

 In the immediate aftermath of Sudan’s elections back in April, several potential flashpoints emerged. While the polls had passed generally peacefully in the South (at least at face value), the post-elections period has been marked by an escalation in tensions.

With six months until a referendum on Southern independence, Sudan is alarmingly unprepared according to a new report published today by a global coalition of 26 humanitarian and human rights organizations. The report calls for urgent action from African heads of state who will meet at a major summit of the African Union in Uganda from July 19-27. The report includes key recommendations for Guarantors—states and multilateral organizations that have pledged to help Sudan implement the CPA— to ensure a free and fair referendum is held on schedule. It also calls for Sudan to ensure that all Sudanese citizens, whether in the North or the South, are protected before and after the referendum.

Although the details remain highly murky, it appears that the Ugandan army suffered a significant loss of troops in the Central African Republic, or CAR, as those forces continue to hunt for Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army. 

The Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, has been ruthlessly attacking civilians in the Central African Republic, or CAR, since February 2008. Attacks continued unabated in the country’s isolated southeastern Haut Mbomou and Mbomou prefectures, and surged during the first three months of 2010. Despite this deadly track record, LRA violence in CAR, one of the world’s poorest countries, has been badly under-reported and gone largely unnoticed. This report, which is based on extensive interviews with eyewitnesses gathered during field research in LRA-affected regions, describes in detail the LRA’s reign of terror in CAR over the past two years.

Based upon the rigorous analysis of leading indicators across nine overarching categories of benchmarks, the Enough Project, the Save Darfur Coalition, and partners developed the following assessment of the amount of change or improvement that has been observed in key areas over the last six months.

The Obama administration built a diplomatic approach to Sudan around periodic, hard-nosed policy assessments of the situation on the ground and the judicious deployment of incentives and pressures in response to the situation on the ground. Yet to date, there are virtually no indications that the administration has held any of the parties to account for their actions since the policy review was announced, and senior administration officials appear badly divided on their approach to Sudan. There is a pressing need for Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama to become directly involved, not only to signal that Sudan is a priority of the administration, but to get the interagency “deputies” review process and the overall approach to diplomacy back on track.

Although the bulk of the results for Sudan’s recent national, regional, state, and local elections have been announced, the potential for local outbreaks of post-election violence in certain areas of the South remains. At this tense juncture, the results of several hotly contested races for state governor may spark local violence and potentially broader conflict in the near future, with consequences for the South’s fast-approaching self determination referendum. This dispatch provides a brief overview of some of the more disconcerting situations.