Darfur and Sudan: visionary approach needed – and Qatar can help Sudan needs a political framework to foster comprehensive peace. Neglecting it will doom peace and nation-building efforts
Share inShare0 Email Sudanese women from North Darfur at the Abu Shouk camp. Doha is hosting a conference on the crisis. Photograph: Albert Gonzalez Farran/AFP/Getty Images The crisis in Darfur is now a decade old, yet fighting continues. More people were displaced by a surge of violence in January than in the whole of 2012. Over half the population (3.5 million Darfuris) still receives food aid – about the same amount as five years ago when the Darfur crisis was said to be at its height. Even more telling of the suffering of civilians, 1.4 million of those receiving food aid are still living in "temporary" camps. In its bid to foster peace in this region, Qatar is hosting the Doha Donors Conference on Darfur this Sunday. Such leadership should be lauded. However, if Qatar wants to see real return on its investment, those attending the conference must understand the reality and look beyond Darfur to the fundamental drivers of conflict that affect all of Sudan. The Darfur peace deal brokered by Qatar in February represents welcome and concrete progress. But the government of Sudan has demonstrated no real political will to implement this deal in good faith. It has failed to fund the peace process to the degree it committed and has taken no real steps to fight impunity, address accountability or resolve complex issues such as land and compensation. The result is that violence persists and stability remains elusive. Furthermore, the advances that have been made by this deal remain extremely fragile and risk being undone by other protracted conflicts sharing the same root cause as the Darfur crisis – Sudan's political and economic marginalisation of its periphery. A case in point is the conflict in Southern Kordofan state, which has been raging for almost two years. It bears many of the hallmarks of the brutality the Sudanese government unleashed on the people of Darfur, including indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas combined with ground attacks that displace thousands of civilians. Sparked in part by Sudan's failure to engage in genuine consultations about governance reform, the violence in Southern Kordofan quickly spread to the neighbouring border state of Blue Nile and now severely affects over 1 million people. Over 200,000 have fled to South Sudan and Ethiopia, and the majority of those that remain are cut off from aid. The violence in these two states is not just linked to Darfur by common cause, but by common actors. In recent months, the Darfuri rebel faction, the Justice and Equality Movement, has formed a military alliance with the rebels in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army – North. This co-operation and rebel-to-rebel sympathy will proliferate as long as Sudan opts for military solutions rather than governance reform. These alliances and shared drivers show that the international community must move beyond the current piecemeal approach to Sudan's conflicts and address them in context, and in relation to Sudan's central governance issues. Instead of looking at Darfur's needs in silo, donors should encourage the development of a national political framework to foster comprehensive peace across the whole country – a framework that is not exclusionary, bilateral or selective. Neglecting to do so will ultimately doom peace and nation-building efforts to failure. Even if fully implemented, the current Darfur peace deal would not address wider internal conflicts, let alone the broader unresolved issues between Sudan and South Sudan that linger after 20 years of civil war and threaten any fragile Darfur peace. Military and repressive responses to internal dissent are not the answer. Instead, a visionary approach is required within the region. Leaders need to enable a political forum for alternate views and help create a credible, inclusive political process to bring about long-term stability. Two things need to happen at this weekend's conference. First, pledges made by donors should not be at the expense of supporting humanitarian efforts. Evidence-based need and security provisions must drive the international response. Accountability and monitoring mechanisms need to be agreed and affected communities empowered to help implement them. The Sudanese government needs to be held to account for complying and co-operating with the peace deal. Second, Qatar should champion a comprehensive and joined-up approach to Sudan's conflicts. As a first step, the conference could urge the resolution of the Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile crisis, beginning with a cessation of hostilities to enable immediate and unimpeded humanitarian assistance. While this conflict continues, Qatar's efforts in Darfur remain at risk. • Dr Najeeb Bin Mohammed al-Nauimi is the former minister of justice for Qatar and an international human rights lawyer -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
