The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that there are currently 1,100 vehicles used by the 81 agencies meeting the needs of over two million displaced people in Darfur. Are the vehicles the right type to…
The Beja, the Cushitic original inhabitants of eastern Sudan, are a traditionally nomadic group with some three million members living in southern Egypt, northeastern Sudan and northern Eritrea. Believed to be the first to domesticate the camel, the Beja live…
We talk about Sudan and the peace deal signed two weeks ago. Jacob is excited, yet – like most Sudanese I talk to – sceptical. “Those big people brokering the peace received six hundred US dollars per day in attendance…
Professor Kälin, in September 2004 you were appointed the ‘UN Secretary-General’s Representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons’. Your predecessor, Dr Francis Deng, did not have the words ‘human rights’ in his title. Does this indicate a change…
Sudan is a nation whose identity has been divisively distorted but which is now striving to rediscover itself, albeit in a tragically violent way. The silver lining is that a more constructive search for an identity framework around which Sudanese…
“Sudan is at a critical juncture.” This is the opening sentence of the Framework for Sustained Peace, Development and Poverty Eradication, the document presented to donors earlier this year as an outcome of the Joint Assessment Mission. The January 2005…
Christoph Jaeger: Compared to previous JAM exercises in Liberia or Iraq, the Sudan JAM lasted a long time. Could the process have been shortened? Taj es-Sir: We insisted JAM should start before the finalisation of the peace negotiations, because we…
Outbreaks of war and violence have followed the failure of peace agreements in several African countries, leading to high death tolls, enormous human suffering and great destruction. The lack of sustained and coordinated international engagement has been a significant contributory…
The state of Sudan was arbitrarily created by colonialists without regard to the views of the concerned communities, particularly the people of southern Sudan. The way the northern ruling elite rushed Sudan to independence via a unilateral declaration not based…
Recognising the need to establish an administrative arm to govern the territory over which it had gained control, the SPLM set up the Civil Authority for the New Sudan (CANS) as early as 1996. While CANS has performed some typical…