10 April, 2010: Global Day for Sudan
On 10 April 2010, the eve of Sudan’s elections, communities around the world held events to ensure that elections do not become a flashpoint for violence and rights violations. The events formed part of the Sudan 365 global campaign -- highlighting the need for urgent international attention for Sudan in this critical year. In the past week, several opposition party candidates have withdrawn over serious concerns for the potential for free and fair elections, and ongoing widespread restrictions on fundamental human rights such as the freedom of expression and association.
Renewed international attention must be focused on this important juncture in Sudan’s history to ensure that the international community's engagement with Sudan is not “business as usual”. This is a critical moment for Sudan. The stakes have been exemplified through the tenuous environment for political opposition members and their supporters, recent attacks on the Jebel Marra region of Darfur, and ongoing insecurity in South Sudan. International support for free and fair elections and engagement with the respective stakeholders for the 2011 referendum for Southern self-determination is imperative.
Details of the event in NY may be found here / picture.
Details of the event in Dakar may be found here / declaration
International Justice in Africa debate
On March 10, the Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR), in partnership with the Darfur Consortium and the International Center for Transitional Justice, commenced a debate that aims to gather the ongoing discussions about the limits and possibilities of international justice ahead of the Review Conference of the Rome Statute scheduled for June 2010.
The essays in this collection include views from scholars analyzing the clarity of different provisions of the Rome Statute, practitioners interrogating the contribution of prosecutions to stability and its balance with local reconciliation efforts, and activists advocating for more support for transitional justice measures in general and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in particular.
Read the essays and submission guidelines here.
2010: a critical year for Sudan
The Reporter - Ethiopia, January 23
By Dismas Nkunda
January 9 had marked the fifth anniversary of the signing of Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The agreement was a milestone achievement lauded by the international community. The CPA laid out a roadmap not only for ending a devastating civil war pitting North against South that killed an estimated two million people and displaced millions more. The agreement did not stop there, however, It also called for democratic transformation in Sudan.
Unfortunately, over the past five years, the peace in Sudan has been anything but comprehensive. War has raged in Sudan's western Darfur region, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives and displacing another 2.5 million people. Although the scale of violence has declined in recent months, there is no comprehensive political solution and violence could reignite at any time. At the same time, critical elements of the CPA were stalled or frustrated, and the promise of democratic transformation has all but evaporated.
Read the article here.
Global Day of Action for Sudan: 9 January 2010
On the 9 January 2010, thousands of people will gather around the world to call on world leaders to prevent a return to conflict in Sudan.
The effort comes with one year remaining until a referendum that will decide the future unity of Sudan, and falls on the fifth anniversary of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. With growing violence in the South, the agreement is in danger of collapsing.
The global initiative is being supported by artists around the world, including Egyptian star Mohamed Mounir and Mr. Yahia Khalil, who will be featured in a film released to coincide with the launch of the campaign. The film features drummers from six continents, all following a beat for peace led by drummers in North and South Sudan.
Read what the Arab Coalition for Darfur organized in Egypt here. Pictures can be viewed here.
A short synopsis of an event in Senegal can be read here.
Statement of support by Sudanese human rights defenders.
November 20: Urge Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGV) Programming
and Prevention as Essential Elements of Humanitarian Relief
in Darfur and Eastern Chad
Read the letter addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and signed by 60+ NGOs here.
On 31 October and 1 November, the Darfur Consortium and the East African Law Society co-hosted a meeting of 23 experts acting in their individual capacities in international and transitional justice and human rights in Nairobi, Kenya to review the agenda of the Preparatory Meeting of African State Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Please find the positions, conclusions, positions and recommendations for consideration by African states parties here.
September 22: President Obama must address Sudan at the UN General Assembly
Huffington Post - by Jerry Fowler and signed on by Dismas Nkunda on behalf of the Darfur Consortium
While President Barack Obama will speak to a number of pressing global issues when he addresses the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow, one topic he cannot neglect is Sudan. The President should seize the opportunity to build international support for policies to protect the human rights of all Sudanese and promote lasting peace in the country.
The stakes are significant. Sudan is the largest country in Africa, surrounded by nine other states which are, in one way or another, affected by its instability and insecurity. It is a bridge between the African and Arab worlds and a key to the balance of both. As leaders of advocacy coalitions in the United States, Africa and the Arab World, we see Sudan as a test of the Obama administration's strategy of multilateralism and America's ability to use its influence to champion human rights, resolve conflicts, and prevent mass atrocities.
Read the op-ed
here.
September 20: I plead guilty to Mwenda's attack
It is not so often that I lock horns with my good friend Andrew Mwenda, who needs no introduction. That was not until the last issue of his magazine (The Independent). I did not know that I was actually and literary in his Last Words, until a friend called to ask whether I had any problems with Mwenda.
So I bought the magazine. And Indeed I was there for a bashing.
On August 25, Prof. Mahmood Mamdani and I were discussing the good professor’s new book, Saviours and Survivor, at Makerere University. I had been invited by Prof. Joe Oloka Onyango to be a respondent to Mamdani’s lecture. What was under review was a book that demonised the campaign that has brought into public domain the war that has claimed many in Darfur, the western region of Sudan.
Read the article here.
September 7:
ICC must consider the security of war victims
The EastAfrican - Kenya
At the conclusion of its Summit in Sirte, Libya, on July 1, 2009, the assembly of heads of state and government of the African Union (AU) decided that “AU member states shall not co-operate... in the arrest and surrender of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.”
In a press release issued two weeks later, on July 14, the organisation explained that this decision “bears testimony to the glaring reality that the situation in Darfur is too serious and complex an issue to be resolved without recourse to a harmonised approach to justice and peace, neither of which should be pursued at the expense of the other.”
Read the article here.
August 27: ICC should not try Bashir - Mamdani
The Monitor - Uganda
Prof. Mahmood Mamdani crossed intellectual swords with Mr Dismas Nkunda at Makerere University on Tuesday, where the two renowned academics clashed over the solution to ending violence in Darfur.
Mr Nkunda, the co-chair of the Darfur Consortium, insisted Sudan President Gen. Omar al-Bashir should be punished by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes. But Prof. Mamdani argued that the best way to move forward after 21 years of violence in Darfur is by propping up political and social institutions, not by demonising perpetrators.
Read the article here.
August 5: ISS Seminar, Sudan at the Crossroads: Elections, Abyei and the Darfur Conflict - hosted by the African Security Analysis Programme in Pretoria, South Africa
With less than two years remaining of the 6-year interim period of the transitional arrangements under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the Government of National Unity, the National Congress Party and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army are likely facing some of the most difficult choices and challenges to the stability and transformation of Sudan.
Important challenges include the holding in 2010 of the first national elections in over 20 years, the fate of the oil-rich Abyei area and the Transitional States, and the Darfur conflict. Whether the South decides to stay united with the North or to secede will depend on how the process leading up to 2011 is managed.
Read the event outline and RSVP here.
