Government Of Sudan Research Articles

Transitional Justice Elusiveness: Case Study of Abyei in 'Sudan'

On 26th May 2006, Government of Sudan and Sudan People Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) signed a protocol to resolve the Abyei Conflict, which dates back to 1905. The resolution bestowed Abyei a special administrative status allowing its citizens to belong both to Bahr el Ghazal in South Sudan and Kordofan in Sudan. Section 1 of the protocol defined Abyei territory as the area of Nine Ngok Dinka Chiefdoms transferred to Kordofan in 1905 (1.1.2) while Section 6 mentioned specifically the Ngok Dinka as residents of Abyei (6.1 (a)). The Misseriya and other communities retained rights to graze and move around the territory of Abyei. Today however the conflict in Abyei is escalating with the Misseriya claiming equal residence rights as the Ngok Dinka, the UN deploying special forces to provide a temporary solution to Abyei problem while the voices of the Ngok Dinka is being suppressed and their annexation to Sudan is becoming imminent. Though solutions to solve this situation were already provided in the 2006 protocol that provided for a referendum to be carried simultaneously with that of South Sudan to decide whether Abyei would maintain its special administrative status or join Bahr el Ghazal; by 2013 however, neither the 2006 protocol or others seemed to provide a solution leading the Ngok Dinka to conduct a unilateral referendum to join Bahr el Ghazal. This study intends to explore the challenges of the Ngok Dinka in accessing justice through assessing the role played by various stakeholders such as Sudan, South Sudan, IGAD, African Union and the international community.

An overview of conflict in Africa in 2014

Violent conflict escalated in Africa in 2014, with five sub-Saharan states – the Central African Republic (CAR), Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan – accounting for an estimated 75% of all conflict-related deaths on the continent. This paper provides an overview of the five major sub-Saharan African conflicts in 2014 and considers the underlying causes and dynamics in the Seleka/anti-Balaka conflict in the CAR, the Islamist threats of Boko Haram and al-Shabaab in Nigeria and Somalia, the civil war in South Sudan, and the long-running conflict between Sudan's government and southern and Darfuri rebels. The paper unpacks the general trends evident in these conflicts and the implications for the settlement thereof, including the targeting of civilians, ethnic and religious mobilisation and the state as epicentre of violence. The paper concludes with a brief look ahead to 2015.

Setting the scene of the crime: the colonial archive, history, and racialisation of the 1924 revolution in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan

This article investigates a part of the “story of the story” of the 1924 revolution, the first popular anticolonial uprising in Sudan to be framed by a nationalist ideology. Considering that the process that turns a past event into history is neither linear nor predictable, I draw on Trouillot's “catalogue of silences” to compare two sets of sources that correspond to two moments in the making of 1924 as history: first, the judicial records produced by the Sudan government during 1924, and second the Ewart Report, written in 1925, to “seal” the revolution. A comparison of these two sources reveals radical discrepancies in the narrative, as well as the silences imposed on and well-concealed fine-tunings of the various voices of the revolution. Of these two sets of sources, it is the Ewart Report that provides the most influential interpretation of the 1924 revolution.

Institutional Development, Governance, and Ethnic Politics in South Sudan

This article discusses ethnicity and socio-cultural complexity in governance, political systems, and bureaucratic institutions in South Sudan. Using the partially thematic and content analysis of the grounded theory analysis, the major themes and categories outline patterns of cultural norms and values in the absence of national identity that affects the pace of sustainable peace, economic development, good governance, and democratic transformation in the country. The outcome suggests that South Sudan continues to face multi-faceted socio-cultural, political, and economic challenges in its transition from ethno-centric system to viable democratic governance. This includes a genuine quest for nation-building transformation to a viable state, establishment of functional system, security, and rule of law and order in the country. The outcomes suggest that South Sudan Policymakers has paid minimum attention in eradication of poverty, high illiteracy rate and dogmatic ethnic values. Nonetheless, the country is in a dire need for traditional and cultural peace-building process among various ethnic-groups and communities as a corner stone for a sustainable socio-economic and political development.

Cherry Leonardi. Dealing With Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State. Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: James Currey, 2013. xvi + 253 pp. Map. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $80.00, £45.00. Cloth.

Cherry Leonardi. Dealing With Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State. Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: James Currey, 2013. xvi + 253 pp. Map. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $80.00, I45.00. Cloth.Recent journalistic accounts of conflicts in the new state of South Sudan have tended to interpret them as between the age-old antagonistic of the Dinka and the Nuer. An earlier and influential generation of anthropologists and Africanists (notably E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Godfrey Lienhardt) described the southern Sudanese region as one of leaderless stateless societies. More recent historians' accounts have seen tribes and chiefs as inventions of colonial rule, with imagined myths of identity and creation. Many have argued that local chiefs have existed at least since the colonial era-but were they in reality the representatives of local groups or of the central government? Accounts of the southern Sudanese independence movements have described the changing relationships between the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement/ Army (SPLM/A) and those who were seen, or saw themselves, as local chiefs. The complex and contradictory nature of political power in southern Sudan exemplifies and perhaps even exceeds that of the rest of Africa. Anyone seeking to understand this complexity, rather than applying any of these old cliches, will now have to start with Leonardi's important and sophisticated book.It is perhaps not an easy read for those who know nothing of earlier literature on the region, and journalists or students with little knowledge of South Sudan might do better to start with more straightforward works such as Douglas Johnson's The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (James Currey, 2012). But Leonardi's book will for a long time be central to any deeper understanding of political structures in the newest African country. She traces the twentieth-century history of political leadership in the region in a comprehensive, theoretically sophisticated, and empirically detailed manner that has not been attempted before by the many historians and anthropologists who have written about South Sudan.The work is based on three urban centers-Juba, Yei, and Rumbek- which were at the heart of post-1900 regional political developments such as military slavery, colonialism, and nationalism. The author's qualitative research in the area and archival knowledge provide a detailed account of how state-or statelike-structures were created on the ground in a remarkably unwelcoming environment. …

The Political Crisis in South Sudan

KeyWords: South Sudan; SPLM/A; civil warThe political crisis in South Sudan is now more than a year old, with no immediate end in sight to the fighting between armed factions. What began as a power struggle within the ruling party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), reignited factional fighting within the army, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), in December 2013. Both the political and military crises had their origins in unresolved tensions following the split in the SPLM/A in the 1990s and the incomplete integration of opposed factions into the army following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 (see Johnson 2014). Many South Sudanese expected that these tensions would eventually erupt in some form of conflict following independence in 2011, but the rapid escalation and intensity of fighting has still taken them by surprise.This commentary can give only the barest outline of a complex series of events motivated by a mixture of political disappointment, personal ambition, and ethnic rivalry. A more detailed reporting of various aspects of the crisis can be found in the updated reports of the Human Security Baseline Assessment (HSBA) for Sudan and South Sudan and human rights reports by Amnesty International, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, and the South Sudan Human Rights Commission (2014).1The CPA was constructed around the assumption that John Garang would remain the leader of the SPLM/A, the head of the Government of South Sudan (GoSS), and the first vice president in the power-sharing Government of National Unity (GNU) with the National Congress Party (NCP) throughout the six-year interim period leading up to the South Sudanese independence referendum in 2011. His death in July 2005, three weeks after his inauguration as first vice president, catapulted two men into unexpected positions of power: Salva Kiir Mayardit, Garang's deputy, assumed the leadership of the party and his two constitutional positions, while Riek Machar, occupying the third highest position in the party, became vice president in the GoSS. Had Garang lived, it is unlikely that either man would have remained in their initial positions, as Garang was adept at moving potential rivals around, preventing them from entrenching themselves in positions of power within the party or the army.Salva Kiir, a veteran guerrilla of the first civil war, was, along with Garang, the last surviving founder of the SPLM/A, all others having been killed in the fratricidal warfare that engulfed the SPLM/A during the 1990s (see Johnson 201 l:ch.7). His survival was due, in part, to having kept aloof from the internal politics of the movement, seeing himself as a soldier rather than a politician. Tensions had arisen between him and Garang at the end of 2004, just before the signing of the CPA, and his future in a Garang-led government was uncertain.Riek Machar had joined the movement from a civilian, rather than a military, background and broke with Garang in 1991 over personal and ideological differences. His attempt to lead a reformed movement failed, and in the end he was forced to fall back on the support of sections of his own Nuer people, a significant proportion of them coming from Khartoumbacked militias. Machar soon lost control over both the formal and informal armed bodies under his command. His rebellion disintegrated into internecine fighting among Nuer, with civilians being the main targets, a pattern that was to reemerge in his current rebellion (see Johnson 2009, 2011:ch.8). He reconciled with Garang in 2002, just as internationally brokered peace negotiations with Khartoum began, and was elevated to the number three spot in the movement's hierarchy.Salva Kiir faced many challenges in forming a government to administer southern Sudan during the interim period prior to the independence referendum. As leader of the army, the party, and the government, he first appointed persons closer to himself than to Garang, some with strong ties to Khartoum, leaving many of the SPLM stalwarts-Garang's Orphans- marginalized within the party and government (see Nyaba 2011 ). …

The Fragility of the Liberal Peace Export to South Sudan: Formal Education Access as a Basis of a Liberal Peace Project

This study examines the disjuncture between the policy transposition of the Liberal Peace Project (LPP) in South Sudan from the country's local context. It underlines how deep rooted historical exclusion from social welfare services reinforces political exclusion and exacerbates poor civic engagement among different ethnicities in the country causing a constant relapse to violence. The study combines a qualitative review of data from Afrobarometer, the National Democratic Institute, international NGOs, and South Sudan's government reports within depth interviews and participants' observation. The research finds that restricted access to formal education alongside the conservative and orthodox approaches to peacebuilding, which broadly focus on centralised urban political institutions and exclude diverse local needs and preferences, limit citizenship participation to elections and preclude an equitable social order in South Sudan, establishing a continuum of fragile authoritarian peace, institutional peace and constitutional peace. In an emancipatory approach, the study proposes a framework that prioritizes an extended access to primary and post-primary vocational education as a more credible establishment for sustainable civil peace in the country. The LPP by the international community needs to be tailored to enhance the political will of the South Sudan government to extend free primary education access, incentivize primary education with school feeding programmes and to invigorate vocational training curricula. These will yield civil peace dividends, which avert South Sudan's structural source of relapse into violence with sustainable disincentives. Apart from women's empowerment through education and in all spheres of life, the government needs to ensure sustainability by guaranteeing a sustainable future for the present and for returning refugees by reducing the effects of climate change so as to cope with the increasing pressure on natural resources.

Dealing with Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State by Cherry Leonardi Woodbridge: James Currey, 2013. Pp. 271. £45 (hbk)

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Institutional Mandate and Public Accountability in South Sudan

Accountability is largely referred to subjecting the decision and action of public duty bearers to some formalized/institutionalized oversight mechanisms. To guarantee that government initiatives responds to the needs of right holders in the context of governance and development. Its increased use in political and policy discourses derives from the basis that it conveys an image of transparency and trustworthiness. However, evocative powers make it also a very elusive concept because it can mean many different things to different people. The challenges facing the application of accountability in Government of South Sudan are quite significant. The presence of very weak institutions, militarized politics and patronage, ethic-based politics, a powerful executive usually associated with post-conflict states all contributes to weak accountability practices. The public bureaucracy is inefficient with inadequate much needed competencies including records keeping and reporting. In order to ensure public accountability, South Sudan must build viable, efficient, effective and professional public institution. The failure to ensure professionalism in government of South Sudan makes accountability impossible. There is too much political interference in the independence of judiciary and parliament. Members and staffs from public institutions act under duress of some sorts from the regime. This means that the oversight roles of such institutions are highly compromised. While in the old Sudan it was difficult to hold a public official whose gun was hidden under his desk to account, in South Sudan public officials and politicians veto any attempt for accountability through cleavages to ethnic/tribal power, regional, military strength to resist the power of the state. It will take a robust shift in the approach to state’s management style at all levels of government to achieve accountability in the new republic of South Sudan.

Explaining the (il)legality of Uganda's intervention in the current South Sudan conflict

During the night of 15 December 2013, fighting broke out between factions of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in Juba, the capital of the Republic of South Sudan. The fighting pitted forces loyal to President Salva Kiir against those loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar. Five days later, Uganda sent troops into South Sudan, advancing a number of reasons for intervention, including that it had been invited by the legitimate government of South Sudan to ensure order; it needed to evacuate Ugandan citizens caught up in the fighting; it had been asked by the United Nations Secretary-General to intervene; and that the regional organisation, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development had sanctioned the intervention. As the conflict escalated, Ugandan troops started fighting on the side of forces loyal to Kiir. The underlying reasons for the intervention were clearly economic, but those advanced were legal. This article discusses both sets of reasons and concludes that the economic reasons are more persuasive. Nevertheless, while some of the legal arguments (such as being invited by the legitimate government of South Sudan) can be asserted, others are clearly dubious. In addition, the participation of Ugandan troops in the fighting on the side of the Kiir government renders the intervention illegal.

Interview with Dr. Tom Catena, Physician-Surgeon, Mother of Mercy Hospital in Gidel, South Kordofan (Nuba Mountains), Sudan

The following interview of Dr. Tom Catena by Samuel Totten was largely conducted in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan. Catena, a US citizen with a medical degree from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has what one can aptly describe as legendary status in the Nuba Mountains. He is the only physician-surgeon at the only hospital in the Nuba Mountains. Due to the fact that he cares for anyone who shows up at Mother Mercy Hospital in Gidel, he has seen up-close the human impact of the bombs the government of Sudan has dropped almost daily on the civilians of the Nuba Mountains since June 2011, as well as the impact of civilians being forced off their farms due to the aerial bombings—that run the entire gamut from malnutrition to starvation. His thoughts on the current crisis in the Nuba Mountains are fascinating and insightful.

Assessing the quality of care in a new nation: South Sudan's first national health facility assessment.

We adapted a rapid quality of care monitoring method to a fragile state with two aims: to assess the delivery of child health services in South Sudan at the time of independence and to strengthen local capacity to perform regular rapid health facility assessments. Using a two-stage lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) design, we conducted a national cross-sectional survey among 156 randomly selected health facilities in 10 states. In each of these facilities, we obtained information on a range of access, input, process and performance indicators during structured interviews and observations. Quality of care was poor with all states failing to achieve the 80% target for 14 of 19 indicators. For example, only 12% of facilities were classified as acceptable for their adequate utilisation by the population for sick-child consultations, 16% for staffing, 3% for having infection control supplies available and 0% for having all child care guidelines. Health worker performance was categorised as acceptable in only 6% of cases related to sick-child assessments, 38% related to medical treatment for the given diagnosis and 33% related to patient counselling on how to administer the prescribed drugs. Best performance was recorded for availability of in-service training and supervision, for seven and ten states, respectively. Despite ongoing instability, the Ministry of Health developed capacity to use LQAS for measuring quality of care nationally and state-by-state, which will support efficient and equitable resource allocation. Overall, our data revealed a desperate need for improving the quality of care in all states.

Book Reviews

This publication includes reviews of the following books:The Horn of Africa by Kidane Mengisteab. Cambridge: Polity, 2014. £15.99 (pbk.). Pp. 240+index. ISBN: 9780745651217. Review by Christopher Clapham. Ethiopia: the last two frontiers by John Markakis. Woodbridge: James Currey, 2011. Pp. 399. $34.95 (pbk.). ISBN: 9781847010742. Review by Christopher Clapham.Regime change and succession politics in Africa: five decades of misrule, edited by Maurice Nyamanga Amutabi and Shadrack Wanjala Nasong’o. New York and London: Routledge, 2013. Pp. 237+bibliography+index, £80.00 (hbk). ISBN13: 9780415534086. Review by Tim Kelsall.China’s resource diplomacy in Africa: powering development? by Marcus Power, Giles Mohan and May-Tan Mullins. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. Pp. 329 + xix, £63 (hbk.). ISBN: 9780230229129. Review by Pádraig Carmody.Dealing with government in South Sudan: histories of chiefship, community and state by Cherry Leonardi. Suffolk: James Currey (Eastern African Series), 2013. Pp. 224 + notes + bibliography + index. £45.00 (hbk). ISBN: 9781847010674. Review by Jonathan Fisher.

International Arbitration: A New Mechanism to Settle Intra-State Territorial Disputes between States and Secessionist Movements? The Divorce of Sudan and South Sudan and the Abyei Question

In 2008, the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) submitted an arbitration agreement with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague. In a unique fast track procedure, an international arbitration tribunal had to determine in accordance with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, in particular the Abyei Protocol and Abyei Appendix, the Interim National Constitution (INC) and general principles of law, whether the Abyei Border Commission (ABC) exceeded its mandate, which was to define and demarcate the area of the nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms transferred to Kordofan in 1905. In case of excess, the parties entrusted the tribunal with redefining the boundaries of the disputed territory based on the parties’ submissions. To guarantee the transparency of the procedure and to generate acceptance by all stakeholders on the ground, all hearings and documents were made publically available. The procedure and the more than 200-pages-long final Award from July 2009 constitute an illustrative example of an international dispute settlement procedure dealing with an intra-state (territorial) dispute between a state and a secessionist movement. The paper asks why and how the parties initiated the arbitration procedure and evaluates the still disputed status of the Abyei Region and the record of the parties’ (non-)compliance with the Abyei Award and its role in the ongoing status-negotiations between Sudan and the newly independent South Sudan. By inter alia taking a comparative perspective with other international dispute settlements the paper critically discusses the legal-political implications of the Abyei Arbitration and whether it could serve as a model or lesson learned when it comes to the effectiveness and success of international arbitration and its potential contribution to the settlement of intra-state (territorial) disputes.

Building a State without the Nation? “Peace-through- Statebuilding” in Southern Sudan, 2005-2011

In January 2005 the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) brought Africa’s longest-running war in Southern Sudan to its formal end. Essentially a two-party power-sharing treaty between the Government of Sudan and the largest rebel organization in Southern Sudan, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), the CPA, which provided a roadmap for peace between the main warring parties and facilitated the secession of Southern Sudan in July 2011, faced a number of challenges due to being imposed over a complex landscape of local political actors. This article analyzes the external intervention during the CPA implementation in Southern Sudan in 2005-2011. It treats state-building and nation-building as separate in order to demonstrate the limits of the current intervention aimed at building a legitimate and authoritative state. The article argues that the external intervention in Southern Sudan, characterized by “peace-through-state-building” approach, was unable to ensure peace during the period examined due to its lack of focus on nation building.

The CPA Failure and the Conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States

This article examines the conflict emerged in the Sudan’s states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army - North (SPLM/A-N) in the aftermath of the Referendum for self-determination that led to the separation of South Sudan from Sudan. It makes the point that the conflict in the so-called Two Areas - the North/South border regions of Sudan that fought alongside the SPLM/A during the country’s second civil war - is the direct result of the failure of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) to address Sudan’s issue of sovereignty beyond the north/south divide, both in its design and implementation. As a result of the CPA, neither peace nor democracy was reached in Sudan. The analysis also looks at the question of liberal peacebuilding and its flawed application in the country.

Briefing: The crisis in South Sudan

ON 16 DECEMBER 2013 THE PRESIDENT of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, appeared on state television in military uniform to announce that he had successfully put down a coup attempt in the capital, Juba. The coup attempt was said to have been led by former Vice-President Riek Machar and several ex-cabinet ministers and officials of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), including Madame Rebecca Nyanding de Mabior, the widow of the SPLM’s first leader, John Garang. Eleven alleged coup plotters were arrested in their homes, but Riek Machar escaped from Juba, and, amid reports over the next few days of targeted killings of Nuer in Juba by men in uniform loyal to the President, the commanders of the 8th and 4th army divisions of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in Jonglei and Unity states announced their defection to Riek Machar and seized control of the state capitals of Bor and Bentiu. In telephone interviews from secure places Riek Machar denied that he had been involved in a coup but then urged the army to overthrow Salva Kiir and announced his plans to march on Juba. Despite the fact that the arrested ministers came from a variety of communities across South Sudan, Western media reports cast the political struggle exclusively in tribal terms, of Salva Kiir’s Dinka against Riek Machar’s Nuer. The targeted killings in Juba and revenge killings of Dinka by Nuer in Akobo and Bor in Jonglei state seemed to bear this out. The coup was said to have begun with a fight between Nuer and Dinka soldiers in the presidential guard following a meeting of the SPLM’s National Liberation Council (NLC), which Riek Machar and the alleged plotters had boycotted, and in which Salva Kiir had denounced Riek in strident terms. Yet while the government of South Sudan has kept to this version of events, they have presented little concrete evidence to support their claim

Paying Lip Service to R2P and Genocide Prevention: The Muted Response of the US Atrocities Prevention Board and the USHMM’s Committee on Conscience to the Crisis in the Nuba Mountains

This article addresses the response of the United States Atrocities Prevention Board and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience to the ongoing crisis in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains (2011–present). First, it provides an overview of the genocide by attrition of the Nuba people perpetrated by the government of Sudan during the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s; second, it delineates the causes and impact of the current crisis in the same region; and, third, it discusses the parallels and differences between the two sets of events. It then examines how, and speculates as to why, the responses of both the Atrocities Prevention Board and the Committee on Conscience have been largely nonexistent and sorely ineffectual.

Gender and Citizenship Center Stage

Sondra Hale’s deep and long-term relationship with Sudan has produced a substantial body of scholarship that has transformed the anthropology of gender in the Middle East. She argues in her work that a version of Islamic citizenship was articulated by Hassan al-Turabi’s Islamist government in Sudan in the 1990s to shape society’s notion of the ideal Muslim woman. This essay looks at Hale’s work on women’s citizenship in Sudan to examine the constitution of this notion and how it shapes women’s citizenship in post-Arab Spring Egypt. My aims are to explore the various conflicting powers through which ideals of women’s citizenship in Egypt after the revolution are produced and to problematize Hale’s notion of citizenship to better understand the role that Islamism plays in shaping these gendered political subjectivities.

Oil crisis and the potential role of agriculture in the post-separation of Sudan

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed by the Government of the Republic of Sudan (hereafter,the Sudan) and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement ended more than 20 years of civil war. Accordingto the CPA, in addition to the oil produced from northern wells, which represents about 30% of the total oilproduction in Sudan, Sudan's Government receives 50% of the oil exploited from wells of the southern part ofcountry. In January 2011, the people in southern Sudan voted for separation from Sudan and in July 2011, theRepublic of South Sudan was officially announced as Africa's newest state. Now, South Sudan possesses itsentire oil production, yet it needs to pay a negotiated amount of fees and customs to utilize the exportinfrastructure of the Sudan so that its oil can be exported. The independence of South Sudan created a huge lossin oil revenue for the Sudan since oil revenue constituted a growing share in its trade, government revenue, andGDP during the last decade. This paper investigates the consequences of the independence of South Sudan onSudan's economy using a Computable General Equilibrium model. Results show that the entire economy wouldbe greatly affected by the applied scenarios as represented by GDP, Households welfare, domestic productionand trade. The study introduces non-oil agricultural exports as an alternative to oil and recommends enhancingagricultural efficiency and promoting agricultural exports to gradually recover the economy.