Saturday, July 03, 2010

Sudan news round-up - CPA partners hand post referendum arrangements to African Union

The two partners to the accord dubbed as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed five years ago to end one of the longest civil wars on the African soil, have agreed to handover the post-referendum issues and arrangements to the African Union’s High Implementation Panel for Sudan, says government’s official spokesman.

From Sudan Tribune by Ngor Arol Garang - (ALEK) Wed, 29 June 2010:
Sudan’s CPA partners hand post referendum arrangements to AU
Dr. Marial Benjamin Bil, a key member of the SPLM and a minister of information in the regional government of Southern Sudan, in an interview with Sudan Tribune from Juba, confirmed the consensus reached by the two parties to involve AU mediators on post-referendum arrangements between the two parties.

The two partners have resolved to involve AU and IGAD in the discussions, said minister Marial, expressing commitment of his party to peaceful settlement of the post referendum issues.

“SPLM is committed to taking part in fair and impartial discussions with the National Congress [Party] by anybody. We are actually accustomed to peaceful dialogue as best way to resolve differences in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement over the past years,” he said.

The leadership of the two parties had carried out lengthy and brainstorming discussions over the post-referendum issues and arrangements which started last year between Southern Sudan Vice President, Dr. Riek Machar and Sudan’s Vice President, Ali Osman Taha.

The reaching of a consensus that allows African Union (AU) play a key role in discussions between the two regions after a conduct of Southern Sudan referendum, which is widely expected to result to secession of Southern Sudan, is viewed by many as the best alternative to break the deadlock.

Others however see it as imposed foreign initiatives which may not be honored by the Sudanese stakeholders.

The consensus reached between the peace partners on Thursday 23, June, in the Ethiopian town of Mekele, shall be facilitated by AU’s High-level Implementation Panel for Sudan supported by IGAD, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development and a regional grouping, the IGAD partners’ forum as well as the UN.
Hat tip: Embassy of the Republic of the Sudan, Washington D.C.

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More at Blogrunner »

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News round-up from SRS - Sudan Radio Service:

02-Jul-2010

01-Jul-2010

30-Jun-2010

29-Jun-2010

28-Jun-2010

25-Jun-2010

24-Jun-2010

23-Jun-2010

22-Jun-2010

21-Jun-2010

18-Jun-2010

17-Jun-2010

16-Jun-2010

15-Jun-2010

14-Jun-2010

11-Jun-2010

10-Jun-2010
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Friday, July 02, 2010

U.S. needs to reverse its sanctions policy on Sudan

Quote of the Day
"America has placed enormous obstacles in the way of its own students and academics learning about Sudan, and in the process has created an impoverished intellectual environment that has lowered the bar on who can be considered an “expert” or “authority” on the country in the media and among policymakers. Of all the self-inflicted wounds of the U.S. policy of sanctions and isolation, this is the most remarkable. A doctoral student looking for a supervisor will have a better chance in the Norwegian town of Bergen than in New York, Massachusetts or California."
- Alex de Waal, Making Sense of Sudan, 02 July 2010
Source: Alex de Waal's blog Making Sense of Sudan
The Missing Academic Generation
By Alex de Waal
Friday, 02 July 2010
In my dealings with American universities, I am often struck how there is a missing generation of scholars on Sudan. There is an older generation of academics who studied, taught and worked in Sudan in the 1960s, ’70s and early ’80s, many of them now either in retirement or approaching that age. And there is a cadre of younger scholars, in doctoral or post-doctoral programmes, who are producing a new English-language literature on Sudan. But there are very few of us in-between.

One reason for the scarcity of foreign scholarship on Sudan is the combination of war and the self-imposed isolation of the country in the 1990s, when visas of any kind were hard to get and the Arabicization of higher education discouraged Anglophone academics from joining Sudanese universities as faculty. For many would-be scholars of Sudan, the point of entry was the NGO sector, especially those working in southern Sudan.

Another reason is the U.S. policy of sanctions, which extends to educational cooperation. America has placed enormous obstacles in the way of its own students and academics learning about Sudan, and in the process has created an impoverished intellectual environment that has lowered the bar on who can be considered an “expert” or “authority” on the country in the media and among policymakers. Of all the self-inflicted wounds of the U.S. policy of sanctions and isolation, this is the most remarkable. A doctoral student looking for a supervisor will have a better chance in the Norwegian town of Bergen than in New York, Massachusetts or California.

Sudanese scholarship has suffered too. Sudanese academics have suffered from isolation, from scarcity of resources, from lack of scholarships and fellowships, and because their expertise is too infrequently recognized abroad. Southern Sudanese have suffered as much as their northern counterparts; the peace studies departments of Darfur’s young universities have been shortchanged.

This will surely change. A good start would be for the U.S. to reverse its sanctions policy.
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