Report on the Canadian Ecumenical Mission to Sudan
March 26 - April 9, 2001

Countries of concern Palestine and Israel| Sudan & East Africa | Indonesia | Colombia

• Introduction
• Sudan: Background
• Impact Of The War On Women And Children
• Summaries Of Meetings
• Recommendations
  

In March/April 2001 five senior Canadian church leaders visited Southern Sudan, a region devastated by 18 years of civil war. The visit was in solidarity with Sudanese church partners and to inform Canadian churches and the Canadian public about the present status of the conflict and its impact on civilians. Delegates carried with them the knowledge that a Canadian company, Talisman Energy, has been accused of complicity in human rights violations in Sudan. The delegation had planned to visit Khartoum in Northern Sudan but the Sudanese government did not grant visas.

Meetings with some 20 individuals and groups were held in Nairobi, Kenya and Southern Sudan, to learn as much as possible about the conflict. The majority of meetings were with Southern Sudanese representing the churches, humanitarian groups, local civil administrations, ethnic groups, and displaced populations.

Testimony gathered confirmed the many prior reports of systematic and widespread human rights violations in Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, especially abuses perpetrated by the Government of Sudan. Reported violations included aerial bombing of civilian centers, scorched-earth raids on villages and rural settlements, depopulation to clear land for oil-related developments, restriction of humanitarian access to populations in extreme need of food aid, and the use of rape as a weapon of war. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and other armed opposition groups also bear responsibility for continuing human rights abuse.

The impact of oil development on the conflict received special attention. A visit to an oil concession in Northern Bahr al Ghazal, and meetings with Nuer people newly displaced from the oil fields of Western Upper Nile, confirmed stories of violent human displacement and the use of oil company facilities (including Talisman’s facilities) by the Sudanese government for offensive military purposes. Talisman’s complicity in Sudan’s oil-driven destruction was cited repeatedly. Because of Talisman’s involvement, many Southern Sudanese believe Canada has abandoned them and question our country’s commitment to human rights.

Delegates were also distressed to learn that another war-related famine stalks several regions of Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains and places the lives of several hundred thousand people at immediate risk.

In general, the delegation encountered a beleaguered but courageous and resilient people desperately trying to hold together family and society in the face of a longstanding and indescribably destructive war – a war with a complex array of causes but in which oil is now playing a major role. Peace cannot come too soon to this tortured land. Faced with the continuation of the war, the international community must find the political will and resolve to act appropriately and effectively to help end the war and establish a just and sustainable peace. There is sober reason to hope that oil— the factor that so many witnesses named as the chief factor presently making the war more intense and more implacable— could also provide the international community with the one lever that could move the two main warring parties to take peace negotiations much more seriously.

Among their recommendations, delegates are calling on the Government of Canada to help facilitate a moratorium on oil development in Sudan until a peace agreement has been reached and implemented; an immediate cessation of aerial bombing; unrestricted humanitarian access to war-affected populations; and more support for the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development’s peace process for Sudan. They also call on Canadian churches to redouble their efforts to raise awareness among and mobilize their constituents on behalf of peace and respect for human rights in Sudan.

	Introduction

Between March 26 - April 9, 2001, a team of five senior Canadian church leaders undertook a mission to Sudan, Africa’s largest country and a land tormented by many years of civil war.[1] The mission was at the invitation of the Sudan Council of Churches and the New Sudan Council of Churches, long standing ecumenical partners of Canadian churches. Inter-Church Action for Justice, Development and Relief (ICA) and the Inter-Church Coalition on Africa (ICCAF) jointly sponsored the mission with ICCAF acting as principal organizer. [2] Funding was made available by several Canadian church organizations.

Canadian churches have enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership with ecumenical Sudanese church partners, namely, the Sudan Council of Churches and New Sudan Council of Churches.[3] They relate to the Sudan Council and New Sudan Council through Canadian ecumenical structures. At present these are ICA, through which Canadian church funds, matched by CIDA, are shared with the Sudanese churches, and the ICCAF, which maintains a human rights monitoring and advocacy program on Sudan.

Key among the objectives of the mission was to demonstrate Canadian church solidarity with the suffering people and churches of Sudan. Sudanese churches have courageously placed themselves on the front lines to serve war-affected populations in Southern and South central Sudan. Another major objective was to gather eyewitness evidence and hear expert analysis that will enhance the credibility of Canadian church members when they advocate for the Sudanese people with policy makers within the Government of Canada, through church agencies or in collaboration with the Sudan Inter-Agency Reference Group.[4]

The mission focused primarily on the impact of the conflict on ordinary people in the South, and the chances for peace, noting both opportunities and obstacles to achieving a just and sustainable peace in Sudan. Team members also sought to know more about human rights violations. They carried with them the troubling knowledge that a Canadian company, Talisman Energy, stands accused of complicity in human rights abuses and of exacerbating human suffering.
The mission delegation was comprised of:

• The Very. Rev. Bill Phipps, former moderator of the United Church
• A.J. Finlay, Anglican Church of Canada and member, Central Committee, World Council of Churches
• The Rev. Arthur Van Seters, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church
• The Most Rev. Donald Theriault, Roman Catholic bishop, Military Ordinary of Canada
• Janet Somerville, General Secretary, Canadian Council of Churches

Hugh McCullum, a Canadian journalist currently working in Africa, joined the delegation. Gary Kenny, Director, Inter-Church Coalition on Africa, coordinated and accompanied the mission.

Initially the delegation had planned to visit Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, in government-controlled Sudan. However the Government of Sudan refused to grant visas for this purpose. Delegates were consequently unable to meet with staff of the Sudan Council of Churches, which is based in Khartoum, or with other church officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations and the Sudanese government, displaced Southern Sudanese in Khartoum, and so on.

The delegation was able to visit Nairobi, Kenya, where the New Sudan Council of Churches’ headquarters are located; Kakuma Refugee Camp, Northern Kenya, where most of the 71,000 residents are Southern Sudanese; Lokichoggio, Northern Kenya, where the humanitarian United Nations Operation Lifeline Sudan base camp for Southern sector operations is situated; and areas of Southern Sudan under the authority of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, the largest armed opposition group in Sudan. In Southern Sudan the team visited several towns and villages in Bahr al Ghazal province including Rumbek, Thiet, Wuncuie and Makuac.

As well as gaining knowledge of the status of the peace process for Sudan, facilitated by the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, the team also learned about the rehabilitation and development work of the New Sudan Council and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement efforts to establish an effective civil administration in Southern Sudan. Meetings with members of Southern Sudan’s Nuer tribe, who said that just days earlier they had been violently displaced from their ancestral lands in the oil fields in Western Upper Nile province, provided the team with first-hand testimony of the devastating impact of oil development in the region.

Canadian churches, ICA, the ICCAF and the mission team wish to express their regrets to the Sudan Council of Churches at not being able to visit Khartoum, and their sincere gratitude to the New Sudan Council for its superb work to host and itinerate the Canadian team in Nairobi and in Southern Sudan. In particular, the team would like to thank Jeremiah Moses Swaka of the Sudan Council of Churches, and Haruun Ruun, Telar Deng, Liz Phillipo, Catherine Karuno, Patrick Sila, Andrea Minalla, and Mario Muoriem Ring, all of the New Sudan Council of Churches.

The mission team hereby submits the following report with recommendations to Canadian churches for their consideration. Planned follow-up to the mission, which includes publicity, interviews and speaking engagements by mission delegates began on April 10 and is ongoing.

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	Sudan: Background

Sudan is Africa’s largest country and is located in the "Horn" region on the north eastern quadrant of the continent. Its citizens number about 35 million and are ethnically, culturally, linguistically and religiously quite diverse. About 52% of the population is "black African", 39% "Arab", 6% Beja and 2-3% citizens of other states. A majority of northerners are Sunni Muslims living in the North. Christians number somewhere around 15-20% of the population and live in the South or as war-displaced near Khartoum. Indigenous beliefs are held by about 25%.

Arabic is the official language but other languages, (e.g. Nubian, Ta Bedawie, dialects [Nilotic, Nilo-Hamitic], and Sudanic languages) are also spoken. English is fairly common in some parts of the South as a result of the work of former church mission schools.

Sudan’s geography is equally rich and diverse. It ranges from dry desert in the North, fertile savannahs and semi-arid bush in the central belt, the centrally-located Suud, the largest stretch of marshland in the world, and mountains and tropical rainforest along Sudan’s Southern border with Uganda. The country is coursed and divided South to North by the legendary Nile whose two main branches, the White and Blue, converge at Khartoum, the capital.

For most of the last 46 years Sudan has been locked in a brutal civil war. Since 1983 when the latest phase began, more than two million people have died from war-related causes (fighting, and disease and starvation caused by forced displacement and the deliberate withholding of food aid). Another 4.5 million have been uprooted, the majority (four million) now living as internally displaced, and the rest as refugees in neighbouring countries.

Systematic and widespread human rights abuses have also been a tragic hallmark of the conflict. While all parties are guilty of serious abuses, the Government of Sudan bears the lion’s share of the responsibility. Many respected international human rights experts and agencies have issued report after report documenting government atrocities and violations of many international laws. These abuses include the denial of freedom of expression and assembly, torture, aerial bombing of civilian centers and settlements, scorched-earth raids for depopulation purposes (especially in the oil fields currently), denial of food aid to war-affected populations, the use of rape as a weapon of war, forced Arabization and Islamization, and cultural genocide.

Sudan’s Conflict and its Causes
The war in Sudan is commonly referred to as pitting North against South, Arab against African, Muslim against Christian with religion at the center of the conflict. This is an oversimplification.

At the core of the war are several factors, historical and contemporary. Sudanese living in Southern and central Sudan claim they have been racially, culturally and religiously discriminated against by Northern Arabs for centuries. They also assert that the North has forcefully exploited their resources for its own gain leaving little if anything of benefit for the South. These resources include people (through the practice of slavery), arable land, minerals such as gold, and now oil. The British, who administered Sudan during the colonial period, did little to develop the South focusing instead on improving the administrative and political capacity and infrastructure of the North. At independence in 1956, most of the key skilled and experienced administrators in the South were Northerners.

Successive central governments in Khartoum, under pressure of extremist Islamic minorities, have flirted with the imposition of Shari'a (Islamic) law on all of Sudan and declared Arabic as Sudan’s official language. These policies have been particular flashpoints for the ethnically, culturally, linguistically and religiously diverse South. The current government, a military dictatorship which came to power in a coup in 1989, has been particularly vehement in its attempt to make Shari’a the law of the land. The desire of Southerners for the recognition of their right of self-determination has aggravated successive Northern governments.

More recently, oil development has become a central issue in the conflict. Sudan’s oil fields, which are found mostly in the South, are under the control of the Sudanese government. Since 1999 when, with the help of Talisman Energy, a pipeline was completed and oil revenues began flowing into government coffers, oil development has led to an intensification of war. Human rights abuses have become more systematic and widespread. Oil has also become an obstacle to peace since the government has declared it is using oil revenues to prosecute the war and destroy all opposition, in particular the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. The government appears to think it can win the war militarily and doesn’t need to negotiate. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, fearful of the government’s intent, appears to be focusing its energies more on its own defensive war-making potential than on the peace process.

While religion is a factor in the war, it is contentious to place it at the core. Some analysts argue the current regime is not an Islamic government as such but that it uses a distorted version of Islam to advance political and other agendas. While some members of the government are undoubtedly driven by religious principles, others appear more motivated by politics and a desire for power, wealth and control. This view – that religion is being used for political purposes – is further supported by the fact that, not only Christians, but Muslims too are targets of the government oppression. In the North, for example, Muslim opponents of the government have been imprisoned and killed. In the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan, mosques and Muslim holy property have been destroyed by government troops and militias backed by the regime and Muslim holy men have been killed. Also, according to international human rights groups, government forces and proxies typically use rape as a weapon of war. Rape is strictly forbidden under Shari’a law and punishable by death.

As for the parties to the conflict, the Government of Sudan (with its seat of power in the North) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (controlling vast areas of Southern Sudan) are the principal actors. But both the North and the South are conflicted within themselves. In the North Arab Muslims, including those attached to traditional Northern political parties, have also taken up arms against the central government. In the South, Southerners have split into factions, largely along ethnic lines, with some aligned to the government in the North, some to the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, and some with no apparent allegiance. Southern divisions, which have been exploited by Khartoum for political gain, have also been a source of violent conflict in the South. To complicate matters more, Northern armed opposition groups, including one of Sudan’s principal traditional political parties, have allied themselves to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army under the umbrella of the National Democratic Alliance. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army coordinates military operations for the Alliance in the North.

Prospects for peace
The civil war in Sudan has been ongoing for nearly fifty years and it seems that the gulf between North and South has only widened as new elements have entered the picture. Some of these are oil development, a deepening of intransigence and mistrust on the part of the parties, Islamization and Arabization, massive human rights violations and the manipulation of humanitarian aid efforts. A rather bleak picture of Sudan emerges in 2001. The impact of this devastating war has drawn the attention of the international community both from the African continent as well as the West. It is responding with massive humanitarian aid valued at $1 million a day. Unfortunately, the money is directed mostly toward emergency responses with too little attention to development.

Of critical importance are efforts to end the war through a negotiated peace. The regional Inter-Government Authority on Development (IGAD) peace process on Sudan was established in 1993 by the Organization of African Unity and includes Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan. In 1994 it forged a Declaration of Principles as a basis for negotiations, identifying such issues as self-determination and the role of religion in the state as legitimate and key points of discussion and negotiation. This agreed upon framework for talks was immediately signed by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement but not endorsed by the Sudanese government until three years later. It offered hope for a "made-in-Africa" solution to Sudan’s conflict. But the Sudanese government’s distrust of the process, preoccupations among key IGAD member countries, and other factors have resulted in drift and stalemate. An initiative by Western countries, called the IGAD Partners Forum, has provided critical support for the peace process, including a standing secretariat and resources for shuttle diplomacy, but still movement is at a snail’s pace.

Unquestionably, with the continuation of the war, there is a feeling of hopelessness and abandonment within Sudan, especially among people in the South. During our visit it was expressed with assertions and questions like the following:
Africa could slide into the ocean and the world would not even notice.
Is it because we are black that the world does not see us, or because we are too tiny to see?
Your oil company [Talisman] is killing my kinsmen.
The Northerners want our land; they do not want us.
We are being starved, bombed, raided, slaughtered. Why did this matter so much in Kosovo if it does not matter here? Where are the countries of the West?

There may in fact be a feeling within the international community of helplessness with regard to Sudan, given the seeming endlessness of the civil war and intractability of the parties to the conflict. Perhaps the world, hopeful of a made-in-Africa political solution, is content to provide only emergency humanitarian aid. While such aid may save some lives now, surely the lack of appropriate and effective international intervention condemns Sudan to many more years of debilitating and deadly violent conflict.

While the IGAD peace process is only modestly hopeful, a "People to People" grassroots process, facilitated by the New Sudan Council of Churches, invites divided Southern Sudanese to initiate peace among themselves. Only with a united South, say proponents of this process, will Southerners be able to present a common front in a national campaign for peace. "People to People" enables dialogue within traditional civil and social structures at all levels and involves traditional chiefs, elders, civic leaders, and so on. It reaches into regions and localities to bring together Southerners long divided by tribal and political differences. Settlements are arrived at through testimonials, discussion and negotiation and sealed through traditional rituals and ceremonies. Sudanese women – women are by far the most affected by the war – are central to the success of this movement. To date great strides forward have been taken and several major initiatives have succeeded in building bridges and healing old wounds.

It is hoped that People to People will have a "trickle up" effect and succeed in uniting leaders and groups at ever higher levels of the Southern Sudanese social and political reality. As more bridges are built and agreements reached, a common voice may help bring about a hoped for peace with the North. Key North/South issues such as resource sharing, the role of religion in the state, and questions of national unity can perhaps then be addressed with an already proven strategy for peace: recognition, negotiation, accommodation and reconciliation.

Having seen for ourselves the toll the war has taken on the people, and discussed it face to face with many stakeholders, it has become painfully obvious that the real issues revolve around the need for respect for human rights, resource sharing, and mutual respect among people of diverse cultural and religious affiliation. Southerners have a deep desire to live in peace and to determine their own future through democratic means. All obstacles to the needed "culture of peace" must somehow be removed. It is generally agreed that a fundamental shift has to occur in the heart of each citizen of Sudan, in each woman and man, in each village, in each tribe, in each soldier and in each government official. What is perhaps most hopeful is that the desire for peace lives and grows and that the resilience of the Sudanese people will ensure that their societies and country are promptly rebuilt once peace is achieved.

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	Impact Of The War On Women And Children

Women and children are very vulnerable in the violence that is taking place in Southern Sudan, including the civil war, the inter-tribal fighting and displacements from the oil fields. They are victims of abduction, slavery, rape and slaughter. Their possessions have been stolen, their homes and crops burned to the ground. Because women and children bear a disproportionate burden of the conflict, their plight deserves to be addressed in particular.

Women, displaced from oil fields, tell of the horror of being attacked by helicopter gun ships or armed militia on horseback and seeing their children killed or burned to death before their eyes. As families run in terror from the bloodshed, some become separated and they are left to grieve not knowing if their children are dead or alive. They walk for days with small children, starving and traumatized, trying to find a safe place to settle.

• Those who live in areas that have been attacked by Antonov bombers live in fear of sending children to school or to food stations because these are often targeted by the high altitude planes. Compassion for unarmed women and children does not seem to exist.
• A high percentage of women make up the population of those who live as displaced persons far from their ancestral lands or end up in refugee camps. Here they are often widows or single parents struggling to feed and raise any surviving children they have.
• Many times women have not been educated and they desperately want something better for their sons and daughters. Instead they have had to watch their young sons be recruited as child soldiers and marched off to the front lines, their daughters abducted as concubines.
• Many children have been orphaned by the wars, they languish in refugee camps, and although there are makeshift schools in the camps, the children are anxious to have a future, to be better educated. Some are being resettled to Canada and the United Statesl far away from the companions who have been their only family, but hopeful for a new life.
• The Sudanese deplore a generation of children lost to literacy and education. Three to four thousand child soldiers have been demobilized from the SPLA and put into camps by UNICEF. We visited one of them just outside Rumbek that included educational programs. Many of the "de-mobbed" boys hope to return to their homes and families, but it is uncertain if homes and families still exist.

In the midst of all this upheaval and tragedy, women have discovered within themselves new strengths. They are moving beyond constraining cultural roles and speaking out loudly for peace. They are the engines behind People-to-People grassroots peace building process. It is the women who have moved forward to look beyond ancient tribal grievances. When peace gatherings assemble, they push the men to think through solutions. They say clearly that they can no longer live in a culture of violence. They want their sons and daughters to grow up in peace. They want the fighting to stop and they play an active role in maintaining peace agreements by making up one third of the membership on the peace councils. The Sudanese Women's Voice for Peace continues to work at involving and training women as peace-builders.

We heard Southern Sudanese women say it would be important to have the voices of women at the IGAD peace table. We conveyed their wishes to Ambassador Daniel Mboya of the IGAD Secretariat when we met with him in Nairobi.

Many of the women are becoming empowered by their added responsibilities as peace-builders and want a role in determining how the future unfolds for them and for their children. They are developing businesses and new skills. They want their daughters to be educated and they are working to raise money to pay school fees for them as well as their sons. They have taken on leadership roles in the churches and even in the administration of the local communities. Their resilience and hard work, and their hope for the future sustains them in the midst of a tragic and complex situation.

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	Summary of Meetings

1. "Lost Boys", Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 27th
Delegates had a fortunate encounter with a group of 45 "lost boys" while waiting in transit in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam for their flight to Nairobi. "Lost boys" is the name given to a group of some 7500 Southern Sudanese youth (boys and some girls) who, because of war, were separated from their families in the early '90s. In many cases the separations were the result of vicious attacks on their villages by government troops, the militia and rival Southern opposition groups in which many of their family members were killed. They endured a remarkable trek of hundreds of kilometers to Ethiopia, then back into Sudan, and finally ending up in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya where they remained for some eight years waiting either to be returned to their homes in Southern Sudan or emigration elsewhere. Many died during their difficult and dangerous sojourn, some from attacks by Arab militia, others from thirst, hunger and disease, still others from wild animals.
Since most appear to have no families to return to, an international program was established to send the youth to the Americas (the U.S. mostly), where they will be sponsored by families or groups and helped to make new lives for themselves. While many youth expressed regret over leaving their country of origin, they were also looking forward to better formal education and ultimately gainful employment in their respective adoptive countries. Such programs are always controversial, the debate turning on whether it’s better to keep displaced youth in the region or send them to the West where they will be immersed in a radically different culture.
2. Telar Deng, Awut Deng Acuil, Liz Philippo, New Sudan Council of Churches, March 28th
Telar Deng explained the roots of the New Sudan Council of Churches highly-praised and innovative grassroots "People to People" peace building process.
In 1991, a major split occurred within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army largely along tribal (Dinka and Nuer) lines. In its aftermath, military and communal violence ensued with each side massacring entire villages in the other’s territory. The division, with its attendant mutual vilification and distrust, has lasted for several years, weakening the spirit and social fabric of the Southern population and leaving it more vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation by the Northern government. In 1997 a major conference was held in Yei in Equatoria to foster dialogue between the churches and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. It served as an opportunity to lay the ground work for the churches grassroots peace building work that would follow.
The People to People process was designed to create the conditions and employ the means to reconcile conflicting groups. It makes uses of a creative and effective admixture of traditional and modern peace building and reconciliatory mechanisms. So far it has consisted of many small and two major conferences (the Nile West and Nile East bank initiatives) resulting in the Wunlit and Liliir Accords respectively. Both have been successful in reuniting large groups of Dinka and Nuer. Telar Deng, a lawyer, coordinated the program and has played a key role in engineering a successful series of consultations. He thanked us and the Canadian government for the Canadian churches’ and CIDA’s financial support of this process.
"Peace dividends" are considered to be a critical means of sustaining the gains made by People to People.. The war has devastated social and physical infrastructure making survival tenuous and often stressing groups to the point where competition for scarce resources can result in conflict. Developmental inputs – clean water, schools, medical clinics, etc.– are considered necessary to restore people’s dignity and sense of self-reliance. They also deepen the roots of reconciliation by functioning as a hedge against further outbreaks of social or ethnic conflict. Sustaining the peace dividend program has been a challenge, however. More financial and developmental inputs must be attracted.
The next stage of the process is to gather middle level Southern intellectuals, regardless of their political or regional/territorial affiliations, together with tribal chiefs to consolidate reconciliatory gains at yet another social strata.
The delegation learned of the critical contribution Southern Sudanese women are making to grassroots peace building from Awut Deng Acuil, the daughter of a Dinka tribal chief. Her father held to the ancient traditional religion of his tribe, her mother was a Muslim. Awut, however, is a Christian who works full-time for the New Sudan Council of Churches, famous now for its innovative peace-making work in Southern Sudan.
Awut explained to us that there is more than one kind of war in Sudan. The overarching North-South conflict is a typical twentieth-century war: driven by an economic imperative, riddled with twentieth-century ideologies, haunted by imperialism old and new, fought with modern arms. The desperation created by that big war has bred fierce little local wars, fought in more traditional ways. Hungry, harassed rural people have reverted to raiding their neighbours (often traditional rivals of their clan) for cattle, women, children and whatever food they can get. Ancient antagonisms get mixed up with the modern civil war tensions, and local life turns into a horror of insecurity and violence.
Into this mixture the New Sudan Council of Churches sends teams of people who understand the neighbourhood, speak the local languages and have a vision of peace. They negotiate, plead and use new and old connections. Soon they are convening peace conferences that cover a wide swath of traditional tribal territories. They help the conflicted communities tell their stories, list their losses, lodge their complaints. They encourage the women to tell the men— in song, dance, and reasoned speech - why war is intolerable to the mothers of children. They arrange for the mutual return of captives. They explain that the South cannot afford to be at war with itself now that the war of North against South is so implacable. Then they pray - in the Christian way and in the ancient local ways. And they help everyone present to enter into a covenant of peace. Sometimes they seal the covenant in the traditional indigenous way: by slaughtering a white bull, with the spear masters of each community leaping in turn over the fallen body, over the small river of blood, in the ancient promise to shed no more human blood.
The peacemaking is working. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is impressed, and has begun to help fund the peace work of the New Sudan Council of Churches. For some years Canadian churches (through Inter-Church Action) and some European churches, have been helping the New Sudan Council of Churches to carry out its daring, peaceful mission.
3. John Ashworth, Coordinator, Sudan Focal Point - Africa/New Sudan Council of Churches, Nairobi, Kenya, March 28th
John Ashworth offered a wide-ranging analysis of the current situation. As a former missionary priest with thousands of people in his parish, situated in what is now part of Talisman’s concession area, John has first-hand knowledge of some of the most tragic realities of Sudan. He now works with an international network of concerned NGOs focusing on advocacy and coordination of information around three major issues: the impact of oil development, the problem of the bombing of civilians, and the vexed issue of political self-determination for South Sudan.
He noted that although there has been a recent reduction in bombing in Southern Sudan (bombing in the Nuba Mountains continues), bombing of civilians remains a threat. Vivid memories of bombings choke off efforts to rebuild any kind of infrastructure (e.g., schools) in the South. Although a no-fly zone would be desirable for the protection of civilians, and is being advocated by the Sudanese churches, there is probably only a faint hope of securing one. There is also a growing fear of the development and use of chemical weapons.
The root causes of the war, for which there is no quick fix, include: the imbalance of power between North and South, which consistently results in the marginalization of the South; and the Arab/Black African tension between North and South. ("Every Khartoum regime, to one degree or another, has tried to Arabize and Islamize the South.")
Asked about the relationship between the churches in the South and the SPLA/SPLM, John observed that the churches "do and should support the struggle for self-determination in the South." But he added that the churches also seek non-military ways of achieving self-determination. All the options need to be explored. His personal opinion is that the SPLA "has lost its way and seems to have no clear military strategy for liberating the South," but that as a movement the SPLM has more going for it than a few warlords," and it recognizes the need to be more democratic. Both sides in the Sudan war violate human rights.
The "Memorandum of Understanding of 1998" is a reasonable document although it has been distorted and misinterpreted. The Church can be objective, if not neutral. The People-to-People peace process needs to be more empowering for all the people to effect the total equation. Slavery has been part of the culture of Sudan for a long time, but the Khartoum regime’s practice of arming informal militias (whose "payment" comes through the cattle, goods and people that the militias seize in raids on villages) has increased the incidence of slavery. The problem with buying back slaves is that it creates a larger market for them. There are millions of internally displaced persons who have been driven off their land for oil development.
Asked specifically about assertions by Talisman Energy that its concession area never did have a large population which was driven away to make room for oil development, John was emphatic. During his years as a Catholic missionary priest, his parish was in the Western Upper Nile area. "There were thousands of church-goers, and tens of thousands of other people. They were all driven away. I know there has been deliberate depopulation of the Western Upper Nile region."
Oil development is bringing death and destruction, not constructive community and human development. The Sudanese churches are clearly saying "stop the oil" until a just peace is in place. Other oil companies such as Fina, Elf and Lundin are following Talisman's lead in working on land whose indigenous population has been violently driven away by the regime with which the oil companies have entered into a contractual relationship. Does Canada want Canadian companies involved in militarized commerce? Oil revenue, John Ashworth added, is supporting the construction of a new munitions factory east of Khartoum.
4. Harold Miller, Mennonite Central Committee, Nairobi, Kenya, March 28th
Harold is a quiet-spoken, thoughtful scholar who has been in this part of Africa since the 1960s. He enlarged our understanding of South Sudan. Many Southerners have gone into the North developing, in the process, a Northern perspective but unable to abandon their Southern traditions. Many Northerners went to the Persian Gulf oil fields before oil began to be developed in Sudan. This latter development raises a question for the Government of Sudan. Will it change its attitude toward the South where the oil deposits currently are in order to gain international legitimacy? Any such recognition of legitimacy has to include genuine benefits to the South.
Some speak of a fundamentalist Islamic mission destined to sweep all of Africa - one that would be both religious and political, a kind of African Islamic Empire. Sudan would become an entry point to move further South and west.
In African religion human beings represent the will of the universe so that what may be called volitional time is the time of the universe shaped by the will of human beings. In this connection, Southern Sudan may be said to be the lung of African cosmology because its peoples still live close to the roots of an African vision of life. They have tested human behaviour and know it deep inside themselves. They express the breath of the life of Africa through their more than 700 proverbs.
5. Bishop Nathaniel Garang, Stephen Mathiang, Peter Majok, Episcopal Church of Sudan, Nairobi, Kenya, March 29th
Bishop Garang and his colleagues briefed the delegation on the situation in the Diocese of Bor, their region of origin and center of ministry. The Sudanese government bombs systematically to depopulate the land. "The Government of Sudan doesn’t want peace, just land," the bishop said. Much of the North is desert and infertile, the bishop added. In our land, "if you drop a nail it will germinate."
The bishop and his colleagues stated that within Sudan there are two very distinct groups of people - Arabs (North) and Africans (South) who, also because of their history of conflict, perhaps should never have been placed together within the borders of a single state. The colonial period only exacerbated the conflict because the South was not developed like the North and, when the British withdrew, they left mostly Northern Arabs in key administrative positions in the South, and Southerners had little real political control over their affairs. This set of circumstances, combined with the North’s imposition of Islamic law and domination over resource development, especially oil at present, are causes of the current war.
On the subject of oil, the bishop stated that 'oil is killing the people" and the "world is silent" in response. If you have investments in Talisman, you have taken part in the suffering of our people, he added. He said that Sudan’s oil should be developed for the good of all Sudanese. We "can share the oil," he said.
We [Southerners] "need peace...and even the Arabs [Northerners) need peace," the bishop added. "We must find the truth that will bring peace."
The churchmen warned of impending famine in 2001and said that seeds and tools were needed urgently so subsistence families could be weaned off their debilitating dependency on foreign aid. On the subject of children, they said that children had been greatly affected by the war – traumatized, orphaned, taken into military service, deprived of an education. Children are absolutely thirsty to learn and so schools are urgently needed. They also praised the Sudan People’s Liberation Army for having recently demobilized many child soldiers.
6. John Luk, editor of the independent South Sudan Post and director of a small centre for documentation and advocacy on matters concerned with South Sudan, March 30th.
John Luk is a Nuer from the Upper Nile, and chairs a Nuer Peace Committee. For some years he worked for the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) and was its Information Officer until he ended his SPLM connection in 2000. Of the commentators we met in Nairobi, his critique of the SPLM was the most far-reaching.
Fundamentally, thinks Luk, John Garang of the SPLA is committed to a united (secular) Sudan, in a way that is unconnected with the aspirations of most communities in Sudan, North or South. For the SPLA, Southern independence is a fall-back position, or at best a goal for after the war has been stopped, with a confederation (two systems, one country) having been negotiated. After that stage there could be a referendum in the South about its future.
When Garang first took the leadership of the movement, he was a Pan-African socialist, hoping for the socialist transformation of all of Sudan. Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet-led socialist vision, Garang speaks no more about socialism. But he does still speak (although not consistently) of a united Sudan - because he has become dependent on dissident groups in the North, without which Garang does not believe he could overthrow the Khartoum government.
However, in the North itself, a secular state is, in John Luk’s opinion, an alien goal; the political groups supporting that solution are tiny. As for the South, almost no one outside of the political leadership of the SPLA/SPLM wants any kind of a united Sudan. They want Southern independence.
In SPLM policy statements, Luk explained, three "tracks" can be found, depending on the audience. Track One: peace will come when the regime in Khartoum is overthrown by a coalition of Northern opposition parties with the SPLA. Track Two: peace will come through the IGAD negotiations process. Track Three: the South should keep fighting, and should persuade its international supporters to develop the South. As a developed country with resources, the South could then negotiate a satisfactory political arrangement with the North.
Luk personally thinks that the problem of Sudan cannot be resolved militarily, and he considers it tragic that the leadership of the SPLM is so militarized. He is not impressed, however, by the SPLA’s present level of military achievement. It controls Bahr el Ghazal "and maybe two other areas", but is not active in the oil fields. The fighting in the oil-active areas is largely between two groups of Nuer - some four Nuer clans (militias) who are supplied by the Khartoum regime and who consider themselves to be allied with Khartoum, at least since 1991; and against them, pro-South Nuer militias who are aligned with and supplied by, for the moment, the SPLA. (One example: Commander Peter Gadet, a Nuer who used to support the pro-Khartoum militias, has broken away from them and is fighting the Nuer who are supplied by Khartoum, his own forces being supplied by the SPLA. Gadet’s mission, says Luk, "is to make oil production as difficult as possible.")
John Luk considers that the work of the churches in reconciling local communities with each other— Nuer with Dinka, and Nuer with Nuer— has been strikingly successful. It has not yet been successful on the level of healing splits among the leaderships of the South Sudan political liberation movement. Some Nuer groups are now affiliated with a movement called the SSLM (South Sudan Liberation Movement), others with SSPDF (South Sudan Peoples’ Democratic Front), which was started by Riad Machal.
"The present leadership of the SPLA doesn’t believe much in dialogue", Luk said wryly. Therefore it doesn’t pay attention to the legitimate problems, objections or interests of particular groups in the South. Nor does it pay much attention to the needs of local communities. He added, "Both Khartoum and the SPLA leadership put their international constituencies first, ahead of the interests of local communities. So grassroots leaders often feel helpless to influence decisions or outcomes."
The international community, John Luk observed, has to think carefully about the impact on the ground of the humanitarian support it gives. It’s true that international players do have to talk with and work with commanders in control of local areas. "But then do you just close your eyes and continue to give humanitarian aid, ignoring what’s wrong with the power structures you might be unintentionally supporting? Are you contributing to long-term misery?"
7. Claudie Sennai, Stephen Randall, political officers, Canadian High Commission, Nairobi, Kenya, March 30th
Claudie Sennai and Stephen Randall first outlined the extent of Canada’s diplomatic and humanitarian presence with respect to Sudan. Canada does not maintain an embassy in Khartoum. However, a political officer, Nicholas Coghlan, is stationed there and reports regularly to the Canadian government on issues of politics and human rights, primarily in the North, as well as on the situation in the oil fields. High level diplomatic representation is provided through Canada’s embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In addition, two political officers (Randall and Sennai) are assigned to the High Commission in Nairobi and monitor peace and human rights issues in South Sudan. CIDA’s work in Sudan is administered principally from Addis Ababa.
Claudie (previously on the Harker Mission) and Stephen said it was difficult for Canadian diplomatic and political staff to gain access to the South to acquire first hand information about the situation on the ground. Security clearance is required from the Canadian government and approval is needed from both the Sudanese government and Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association (development wing of the SPLM). However, they have regular access to Sudanese and Sudan-related international organizations based in Nairobi, including the SPLM, the New Sudan Council of Churches, the UN’s Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) and IGAD’s peace envoy for Sudan. They maintain regular contact with these and many other groups and individuals.
Although peace negotiations are stalled, they viewed the establishment of a secretariat in January 2000 as a positive step and said the greater regularity of official talks - four since January 2000 - offer some hope that a political solution will be found. However, they acknowledged, the talks seem stalemated over several key issues, among them, Shari’a law, the boundary separating North and South and the Nuba Mountains. They viewed the notion of "wealth sharing" of oil revenues as a potential incentive for both main parties to resolve the conflict on good faith; the Sudanese government needs peace to develop the South’s oil potential fully, and Southerners need oil revenues to rebuild their impoverished, war-devastated communities.
Claudie and Stephen regretted that key member countries of IGAD (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya) were not fully focused on the peace process owing to their own internal or intra-state political difficulties. They hoped that a set of recommendations formulated by the IGAD Partners Forum in the fall of 2000 would help these countries coalesce more energetically around the peace process. They expressed confidence in the Partners Forum as a vehicle to support the peace process.
Were peace to be achieved soon, however, divisions among Southerners would likely mean that some degree of political instability would continue. They saw the resolution of South-South conflict as critical as peace between North and South. They said they believed there is a deeper desire for peace among ordinary southerners than there is among the South’s political leadership, and hoped that outside observers would recognize the existence and importance of the grassroots movement for peace.
On the issue of Canada’s position on southern self-determination, Claudie said it was not the place of other countries to determine whether Sudan should be unified or the South should separate. She said that self-determination would not mean immediate southern separation but rather a process within which southerners would have an opportunity to discuss their political future. She acknowledged that, among ordinary southern folk, there is a deep distrust of central government in the North.
Some members of the delegation expressed their anger that Canada had not taken action against Talisman which, they said, along with Lundin and other oil companies, is clearly complicit in serious human rights abuses and violations of international law, as Canada’s own Harker Report authoritatively documented. These abuses include violent depopulation to clear the oil concessions for unimpeded development and the use of airstrips on Talisman’s concession for offensive military purposes, including attacks on civilians. They asked how Canada is able to justify the inconsistency between supporting the peace process on the one hand while peace is undermined by oil development, in which a Canadian company is playing a leading role, on the other. Stephen and Claudie expressed sympathy with the delegates’ concerns. The delegates also expressed concern that Canada’s reputation as a country that respects and promotes human rights is suffering as a result of the Talisman connection. Claudie agreed that the perception in the South is often that "Talisman is Canada".
(Note: Delegates also had a meeting with the Canadian High Commissioner to Kenya, Mr. Gerry Campbell, and members of his political staff on April 8th in Nairobi to report briefly on their field visit.)
8. Roman Catholic Justice and Peace Task Force, Sudan Catholic Bishops Regional Conference, Nairobi, Kenya, March 30th: Task Force members: Most Rev J. Akio (Chairman), Auxiliary Bishop Diocese of Torit; Fr. Ed Brady, U.S. Jesuit, Task Force head; Mr. Dan Griffin, U.S. Maryknoll Missionary; Fr. Damian Adozoo, General Secretary, Sudan Catholic Bishops Regional Conference.
After the five Catholic southern dioceses had formed their own regional Conference of Bishops, a decision was taken to create a task force to serve Catholics living under civil war conditions in Southern Sudan and to facilitate and coordinate relief and development efforts in cooperation with existing church, NGO and political groups. A secretariat was established in Nairobi, Kenya for logistical and security reasons. The Task Force has been careful not to align itself with any political or military groups so it can carry out its humanitarian work without prejudice. It actively supports and promotes the IGAD peace process for Sudan.
The Task Force is primarily concerned with the causes of people’s suffering in Southern Sudan (e.g. population displacement, oil development, availability of clean water, the general impact of the war). It works closely with other church organizations (e.g. SCC, NSCC, International Bishops Conferences) and NGOs to make humanitarian aid available. The Churches have assumed a major role where government agencies have failed to respond adequately, namely in supplying food and water in some areas, the care of refugees and internally displaced persons, education and health care. It believes along with its partners that the flow of oil has to stop before peace can be achieved. "Blood oil" is the term it uses to describe the oil.
In its mission of justice and peace, the Task Force has begun a consultation on Islamic faith and its teachings and the impact they may have on the peace process in Sudan. It works to break the cycle of hatred in order to create a "culture of peace" as opposed to the "war mentality" that reigns at present. "Searching for ways to confront violence," it calls for people in Catholic parishes to have a change of heart that will open doors to forgiveness and reconciliation (following the example of South Africa).
The Task Force supports the NSCC’s grass roots "people to people" peace process, which moves in the same direction of reconciliation at the local level. Peace has to take root locally before it can come about nationally. The Task Force also feels that the international community must be more involved in the peace process. Our guests also suggested that closer cooperation on Sudan-related issues between the U.S. and Canadian conferences of Bishops should be initiated. Such effort could significantly help the devastating situation in Sudan.
9. The Rev. Matthew Mathiang, Presbyterian Church of Sudan; The Rev. George Riak, Coordinator of Relief and Development, Chair of the Inter-Church Commission, Nairobi, Kenya, March 31st
The discussion with Matthew Mathiang and George Riak highlighted the effects of oil development on the civil war, the fractiousness of leadership in the South, the importance of the peace process and the hope for international action to help achieve peace in Sudan. There is a move among intellectuals in the South to unite for peace, to move beyond the past and build a leadership that is committed to peace. There is a concern that SPLM/A is not open to involving other voices and appears to have no sense of urgency to stop the war.
It is very important that the South, particularly the Nuer tribes, are united in purpose if South Sudan is to be liberated. The Nuer Peace Committee has planned a four stage peace process. (1) A Peace and Reconciliation Conference in the Eastern Upper Nile. (2) Another in Western Upper Nile would try to bring together the SPLA and the SPDF. (3) A meeting to sort out disputes over grazing lands and fishing areas. (4) An effort to allow the South to choose its political leaders. Money would be needed to effectively negotiate this with the SPLA.
Comments made by the churchmen:
"Tell Talisman to pull out until the war is over ... peace must come first, oil second."
"Originally when Chevron was exploring for oil, the company offered money to the people for their land, but Talisman works with the government of Khartoum, the enemy of the people."
"Refugees who have gone to Canada to be trained will come back and find that they are landless."
"After the local tribes are driven off their land [in the oil fields], [the government brings] people ... from the North to resettle the Nuer ancestral lands."
"The war has gone on too long, women and children are suffering the most."
"We were young at the start of the war, now we are old, come to our aid ... Perhaps it is too late, but we still have hope."
"The international community has turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to our situation. Is it because we are too black to be seen or too tiny [too insignificant] to be heard?"
We were urged to go back to our churches and raise our voices to say that the war in Southern Sudan must stop, and that the IGAD peace process for Sudan must be made to work.
10. Kakuma Refugee Camp, April 1st
Located in Northern Kenya, Kakuma Refugee Camp has a population of 71,000, 70-75% of which are Southern Sudanese victims of war. Dinka, Nuer, Equatorians and even Nuba are represented. About 56% of camp residents are women. The camp, which is under the auspices of the UN High Commission for Refugees, and run by several implementing agencies (Lutheran World Federation being the main "partner"), copes with many challenges. The most immediate is "donor fatigue". It is becoming increasingly difficult to raise funds to feed, clothe and provide medical care for camp residents. Funding was down 20% in 2000 and the same decrease is anticipated for 2001. This puts camp management in a very difficult position. If they can’t feed the population, they face not only the prospect of people suffering from hunger, but also a food insecurity situation that could create unrest leading to violence. There is also a chronic, and serious, shortage of water.
Clashes between residents of different nationalities and cultures were also identified as an ongoing challenge. The camp is divided into separate ethnic communities to try to minimize this problem. Self-initiative is encouraged. Each community is expected to develop its own administrative structure in cooperation with camp management. Political activities within the camp are forbidden. At times camp staff and the Kenyan police that maintain a base in the camp have to step in to quell and resolve conflicts usually rooted in cultural misunderstandings. Sometimes clashes are over access to basic amenities which not all communities within the camp have access to, necessitating sharing. Some cultures find it an affront to their sense of independence and dignity to have to rely on others for such basic needs as clean water.
The Canadian visitors were distressed to hear from several Sudanese youth that murders were taking place at night in the camp. A member of camp management confirmed the violence, speculating that local Kenyan thieves were the perpetrators, entering the camp under cover of darkness. Although camp residents have so little, local Turkana people appear to have even less. This explanation hardly explained why Sudanese youth were being killed in their sleep.
The camp is challenged by the need for education. For youth especially, who otherwise would languish in the camp, basic education is a necessity. It is also a precondition for successful re-integration into Southern Sudanese society once conditions in the field permit camp residents to return to their places of origin. The camp provides primary and some secondary school facilities. (In the words of one of the management staff: "What schooling there is follows the Kenyan curriculum up to the secondary school level; then there are some scholarships." ) The UN High Commission for Refugees provides the funding.
Camp residents can stay as long as they want or leave freely at any time. Security and safety issues usually determine when and if an individual can or should return home. Many southern Sudanese have been in the camp since it opened some 10 years ago. The U.S. and Canada are among the countries that accept refugees from Kakuma
11. Head Nurse, Lopoding Hospital, International Committee of the Red Cross, Lokichoggio, Kenya, April 2nd
The International Committee of the Red Cross operates a base hospital just outside of Lokichoggio, Northern Kenya with a capacity of 50 beds in 1997 when it began operations and 560 beds today. Currently it houses 391 patients – 50% of whom are war wounded. It has 30 medical specialists and a total staff of 180. The Head Nurse (from the Netherlands) graciously gave us a full tour of the operation. She explained that a high percentage of the infections due wounds received in the war in Sudan result in loss of limbs simply because of a lack of prompt medical attention; hospital or clinical facilities are few and exceedingly difficult to reach. So the base includes an orthopedic workshop to manufacture limbs right on site. Other patients are there because of emergency conditions such as snake bites, accidents, sickness, etc.
Every attempt is made to select the neediest patients through referrals from health clinics throughout Southern Sudan, according to clearly established guidelines. These patients are returned to their place of origin or allowed to move somewhere else as soon as possible.
At Lopoding Hospital we saw vividly the physical evidence of what the war is costing the southern Sudanese people. One unforgettable sight was a sort of exercise ring marked out on the sun-baked earth, complete with wooden steps and other obstacles built for practicing walking. There, dozens of amputees with new wooden limbs, all made in the nearby workshop, stoically trudged around and around under the sun, enduring the pain of becoming mobile again. And these Sudanese were "the lucky ones" who managed to get medical help.
12. Meeting with staff of the UN World Food Programme, Lokichoggio, Kenya, April 2nd
Because of its sensitive nature, the full record of these conversations is not included in this report. Staff fully briefed the delegation on the food security situation in Southern Sudan and warned of serious food shortages possibly leading to famine in the coming months. The crisis has its roots in the destabilizing effects of war, including conflict in and around the oil fields, and recurring drought.
13. Jimmy Oseriho, New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC) Compound, Lokichoggio, Kenya, April 2nd
Jimmy is a young person who witnessed the February 8, 2000 bombing of the elementary school in Upper Kauda in the Nuba Mountains in South central Sudan (which is politically part of the North). Areas of this region under the control of the SPLM/A have been systematically and relentlessly bombed since 1985 with the principal targets being civilians. The central government appears to want the fertile Nuba lands, which lie just northwest of the oil fields, but is also known to detest the fact that Nuba Muslims and Christians have lived together in peace, often inter-marrying, for many decades.
According to Jimmy, the government Antonov bomber flew at about 500 meters and the pilot would have been able to see clearly the children gathered under a large tree, which was their classroom. Yet it bombed them directly, killing the teacher and 14 children. Flying shrapnel wounded many more. As the plane approached, a teacher told the children to lie on the ground to minimize the injuries which would have been even worse if they were up and running. Jimmy Oseriho did so, and believes that that is why he avoided major injury. All of the survivors were deeply traumatized. The Sudanese regime uses terror and trauma to force people to leave their ancestral lands. Jimmy, and most other southern Sudanese with whom we spoke, take it for granted that the real purpose of dropping such bombs on innocent children is to drive away the people from their traditional lands.
Later the government claimed that the school was just a cover for SPLA guerrilla activity. ICCAF staff who have visited the area twice say there was no appreciable military presence near the school, which was operated by the Catholic Church. On April 7 in Nairobi, during a meeting with Neroum Philip, executive director of the Nuba Relief , Rehabilitation and Development Organization, our team was shown amateur video footage of the immediate and horrific aftermath of the bombing.
14. Andrea Minalla, New Sudan Council of Churches, Rumbek, Southern Sudan, April 2nd
Andrea Minalla, who accompanied delegates throughout their visit in the field, is also in charge of the New Sudan Council of Churches’ nine ecumenical centers in "New Sudan" (Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains). He explained the history, purpose and functions of the centers.
First the New Sudan Council of Churches sets up a system of inter-church committees throughout Southern Sudan. These are open to whichever denominations "believe in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Son of God" and celebrate the principle of "unity in diversity". The task of the committees is to monitor communities and identify the various problems facing them whether as a result of the war, underdevelopment, natural calamities, etc. Once the problems are known, they are communicated to the secretariat of the New Sudan Council so assistance on the ground can be facilitated. Help could be in the form of emergency relief, rehabilitation or development aid, training or advocacy depending on the particular challenge.
Ecumenical centers were later established in key regions to serve as anchors for the work of the inter-church committees. The current nine centers are bases for awareness raising, and, soon, paralegal training to help re-establish a system of civil authority and an effective system of jurisprudence. Educational and medical supplies are also distributed through the centers.
15. Visit to the Regional Secretary and his colleague, in Rumbek, Southern Sudan, April 2nd.
We received a warm welcome. The Regional Secretary had recently received a delegation of United States Catholic Bishops and was pleased that Canadian church leaders also sought first-hand experience of the tragedy in Sudan. Some of their comments included the following.
· They feel like a forgotten people on the world's stage, even though the war afflicting them is the bloodiest and longest war in Africa.
· They have tried to build a civil administration since 1994, following the first convention of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. It is a slow, maturing process involving a four-tier system of governance. Although there are elections, so far it is a one-party system.
· The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement is the "vanguard" body, the supreme political authority. Under its authority there are elections beginning in villages, which send representatives to the "payam" level (Sub-division of a county), and so on to the county and regional level.
· It is a big challenge to organize civil administration and public services in the liberated areas, with almost no money. Most humanitarian relief comes through international non-governmental organizations.
· The Government of Sudan targets civilian populations, creating internally displaced persons and starvation throughout the region.
· "Oil is a big concern. It is being stolen, then used to destroy us. This is reality now."
· Oil is in both Nuer and Dinka territories. (He pointed out Talisman's concessions on the map.)
· To secure oil-producing areas, the Government of Sudan pushes out the local people and renames the areas with Arab names. "I wish the oil company managers would come to see the damage they are doing." "We have nothing to hide".
· The People-to-People peace process initiated by the New Sudan Council of Churches and supported by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army is essential because "when there is peace among us [in the South] we are strong".
· The Nuba region is in a difficult spot, caught between the North and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement.
· A key issue is self-determination and the creation of a "secular" government in the South - in contrast to the Arab Islamic government in the North. The South needs the right to choose by way of a referendum. The Sudanese government will not agree to a unified secular Sudan.
· If the Khartoum government imposes Islamic law, the Organization of African Unity is powerless to do anything about it.
· SPLM leaders appreciate the moral support of the United States and also the humanitarian work of various non-governmental organizations. They await clear signals from the new Bush Administration.
16. Deng Alor, Regional Secretary (Bahr al Ghazal), Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Rumbek, Southern Sudan, April 3rd
Secretary Alor, who also has foreign policy responsibilities for the Movement, welcomed the delegation and took questions.
U.S. policy on Sudan: Deng hoped that the Bush administration would take a "more practical" approach to Sudan by increasing its support for reconstruction efforts in Southern Sudan and by making the Sudanese government more accountable for human rights abuses. He hoped the U.S. would push for an independent commission on slavery. He acknowledged that Bush was an oil man and might not be inclined to support capital market sanctions against companies doing business in Sudan and trading on U.S. stock exchanges, but said that U.S. oil interests would be better realized in an atmosphere of peace, thus implying the Movement’s preference for a "peace first, oil later" approach.
IGAD peace process for Sudan: The cause of the lack of progress is the Sudanese government, not the IGAD peace process structure. The government does not want to respect the South’s right to self-determination, a key principle of the IGAD talks, and so approached Libya to initiate a second peace process (Libya-Egypt initiative) to foil IGAD. The government thinks it can win the war militarily and so does not want peace. The Arab world’s uncritical support of the government is a problem, especially Egypt, which fears the violations of its water rights (the Nile), but we would never block the Nile; that would bring war. The involvement of civil society in the talks would not help at present. Civil society in South Sudan first has to be developed. The West should support such development.
Talisman: It is immoral that foreign oil companies are giving the Sudanese government oil revenues at this time of war. Talisman is helping the regime buy and make arms and is prolonging the war. It is paying government military officers directly. Talisman is a qualitatively different company than the Chinese and Malaysian state companies; it comes from a democratic country and should be concerned about human rights and its complicity in abuses. Better Talisman than the Chinese? If Talisman is complicit in violent displacement, paying military officers, allowing its airstrips to be used for offensive military purposes, and using brutal militia for security – how is it any different from the Chinese? The problem is not oil development per se, but the regime’s control of development and its use of the profits against the South. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement would talk to Talisman and other oil companies if they (the companies) were interested in making a deal to develop the oil through the South. Talisman’s support of community development as justification for its presence is like saying, "Let me slaughter you and I’ll give you a decent burial."
Unity or southern separation: The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement believes the future of Sudan is as a unified country. Once peace is achieved, and an interim period established, the SPLM leadership believes it can make unity attractive to the majority of southern Sudanese even though southerners may presently prefer separation. We know this will be difficult.
Deng asked delegates to persuade the Canadian government to apply more political pressure on the Sudanese government to stop the war. The regime must be made to stop its bombing of the South, which is designed to terrorize, discourage and demoralize the civilian population. An internationally enforced no-fly zone should be established. (If in Iraq, why not Sudan? He asked.) He also asked for more support for the education sector. ("Your churches should support our schools, and help us to provide libraries and cultural centers," he said.) The South needs to educate its youth to build a strong and vibrant civil society. He also called on Canada to pressure the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army to act democratically at all times and respect human rights.
17. Auol Deng Auol, County Secretary, Tonj County, Charles Kol Deng, Secretary, Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association, Richard Ring Acir, Director of Local Government, Tonj County, April 4th
The secretary was quite concerned about oil development and Talisman’s participation. He stressed that oil revenues are not benefitting southerners despite what Talisman has said. Oil development is causing war. Talisman has "joined the enemy" (Sudanese government). They are like-minded in that they have their own narrow objectives and care nothing about the southern Sudanese and their legitimate aspirations. "We [southerners] are being subdued by this oil," he said. He added that Talisman has no power to share the oil because the Sudanese government won’t allow it. The government is the "master" of Talisman.
The secretary said that 19,000 internally displaced Nuer from the oil fields in Upper Nile had sought refuge in Tonj County in 1999. The total for 2000 might be even higher. Agricultural tools, ox ploughs and seeds were urgently needed to help displaced Nuer begin farming on land that local Dinka would give them. He also said medical services were urgently required for three payams (sub-divisions of a country) and that they had no drugs. He hoped that as a spiritual and humanitarian delegation the mission could respond to these needs.
18. Meetings with internally displaced Nuer people at the villages of Wuncuei (April 4th) and Makuac (April 5th), Bahr al Ghazal, Southern Sudan
In the village of Wuncuei in Bahr al Ghazal we met with a group of about 30 Nuer people, mostly men with a few women and children. The Nuer are the second largest ethnic group in Southern Sudan and occupy much of the land in Western Upper Nile where oil exploration and development is occurring. They represented a larger group of 600-800 who had fled from four areas in the Leer area of Western Upper Nile, in the oil fields, and had met on the way while running in terror from attacks by soldiers. It had taken them 10 days to reach a safe haven and they had arrived in Wuncuei just four days earlier.
They had fled their communities when soldiers entered their villages, shooting indiscriminately from vehicles, tanks and helicopter gunships. They told of the slaughter of anyone in the way, including children, women and the elderly. They had fled, forced to leave behind the bodies of those killed and the wounded.
Among the group were four chiefs representing four clans, the Kwan, Nyong, Bek and Jgai. The paramount chief , James Kong Yar, was the spokesperson and when asked how many were killed, he said he would only name those whose bodies he had seen with his own eyes. As he named each dead person he would pick up and hold in the air a small twig or tree nut and then, as he set it firmly on the ground, he would name and describe each person - a little boy, an old blind woman, a catechist at the church. Each of the chiefs followed the same pattern, and as they named the dead, two people on our team carefully wrote down the names. It was our way of honouring their dead and valuing their story. It was a sacramental moment.
The chiefs told us that the oil companies were conducting seismological tests area by area to find the oil. Their movements were hard to predict. They would suddenly change directions during their testing and the local people never knew when they might be in the way. Chinese were working in the area and appeared to be conducting the tests, and Sudanese government troops accompanied them for security purposes. When they were not exploring, the workers and troops did not seem interested in the local people, but when they were ready to advance into a new area that was inhabited, they became hostile and the forced removals would start.
A pregnant woman spoke of how she had been working peacefully in her home with her children. Suddenly helicopter gunships were overhead and there was shooting from all sides. Her four small children were all killed. As they were running, her husband was wounded, fell down and died.
The people we met with were very hungry. During their trek from Leer, through the vast swamp that separates Western Upper Nile from Bahr al Ghazal, they survived on water lilies and tree nuts. The local Dinka people of Wuncuie had helped them and slaughtered a bull for food. They were grateful that they, as Nuer, had been cared for by Dinka communities. Throughout much of the 1990s the Nuer and Dinka, the largest ethnic group in Southern Sudan, had fought with one another. Thanks to the NSCC’s people-to-people peace building process, wounds had been healed and peaceful co-existence was now being enjoyed.
They said there was nothing for them to go back to, that all their property had been burned and all their cattle were gone. They had been mostly subsistence farmers, some fishers. All they wanted now was a chance to begin again and asked for seeds, hoes, fishing equipment and ox ploughs. Local Dinka seemed prepared to offer them land on which to settle.
The next day we moved to another community, Makuac. Here we met another group of displaced Nuer (12 women, 20 children and 2 old men). They had walked for seven days from an area south of Bentiu, the epicenter of oil development in Western Upper Nile. They had been in this area for two days. Their men had gone back in the direction from which they came to look for food and would return for their wives and children.
The women told of Sudanese (presumably southern Nuer) who had come to their village and asked the people to join up with the Arabs. When they refused, they were attacked by Commander Paulino Matip, a Nuer aligned with the Sudanese government, and Arab militia (murahileen) on horseback. "He comes shooting and then burning . So many attack." said one of the women. Many had been killed, they said. Some were still back at a river in the swamp too sick or injured to move. Their homes were burned down and their cattle stolen. People were pursued as they ran and all their possessions were lost.
Mothers spoke of their children who had been killed. One woman's four children were all burned to death in the family tukul (thatched-roof mud hut). Another also had four children killed, two burned to death and two shot. "God was with those who died and those who lived," one woman said. They said they believed their prayers had protected the children who had safely made the journey with them.
They were hesitant to talk about the oil. They said they were ignorant about oil development and they were fearful of exposing anything about the "petrol" because it may be the cause of their "sickness". "At home people were dying, no one is dying here. Why could we not stay here and have seeds to cultivate crops?" They too had lived on nothing but water lilies and nuts and were very hungry, and dependent now on the local Dinka for food.
19. Neroun Phillip, Executive Director, Nuba Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Organization (NRRDO), Nairobi, Kenya, April 8th
Neroun Philip is of the Nuer tribe of the Upper Nile region, known as the people of the Nuba mountains who have suffered greatly, especially when the Sudan People’s Liberation Army started to conscript in that area. Until then, these people had been under the umbrella of the Government of Sudan with meager social services. In 1987, they were effectively abandoned by the Government of Sudan. Humanitarian aid and social services stopped, access to the Nuba people was cut off. The Sudanese government holds most of the major towns while the Sudan People’s Liberation Army’s sphere of influence has been mainly in rural areas. Of a total population of about one million, about 350,000 Nuba live in areas under control of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.
The government has blockaded areas controlled by the guerrillas for more than 10 years, in violation of the tripartite agreement signed in 1989 by the Sudanese government, UN and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. The accord was supposed to guarantee aid to all war-affected populations in Sudan Some small amounts of aid are provided by the Nuba Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Organization but the only access is by air and flights are very risky. Christian Aid, the New Sudan Council, the Norwegian Church Aid and a few others try to assist the Nuba as well.
The problems of the Nuba people became increasingly aggravated with renewed oil development in the late 1990s. The pipeline that carries the so-called "blood oil" to markets runs through the Nuba region. This development occasioned the forced displacement of large numbers of people, 15,000 in 1999, 11,000 in 2000 and some 15,000 in 2001 to date. The government’s displacement tactics are similar to those used in the oil concession and exploration areas.
We were told about those who were either forced or chose in fear of starvation to move to towns under government control. Government officials placed them in what are euphemistically called "peace villages" but which in reality are little more than concentration and slave labour camps. Young men live in isolated areas and are detained in chains until they agree to serve in the Sudanese military, where they are often forced to fight, terrorize and kill their own Nuba people. Women are also segregated and subjected to rape and slave labour. Youth are forcibly indoctrinated in Koranic schools into the Sudanese regime’s particular version of Islam.
Neroun brought the desperation of his people home to us. They are caught up in a war they did not want. They suffer simply because of where they happen to live. However, they identify and have aligned themselves with Southern Sudanese, wish to be politically associated with the South, and look to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army to protect and defend their land and culture. Most guerrillas in the Nuba Mountains are Nuba and the Nuba also fight in the South with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army there. Under the massive weight of government persecution they are at risk of losing their sense of identity as a people, their sense of purpose, their traditions and at this point in 2001 their hope for peace.
20. Daniel Mboya, Special Envoy to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Nairobi, Kenya, April 8th
In our final day in Nairobi we met with Ambassador Daniel Mboya who was appointed by President Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya to be the Special Envoy to IGAD’s peace process for Sudan, and to establish a Secretariat to facilitate its work. Mr. Mboya explained that Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea established IGAD in 1993 as an alliance to deal with severe drought in the region. In 1994 IGAD was further mandated to address the internal conflict in Sudan and for this task it established a formal Declaration of Principals to guide negotiations. It took until 1997 for both the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army and the Sudanese government to sign this document.
Ambassador Mboya was appointed Special Envoy in 1999 and with the ambassadors of the other three IGAD countries formed the Secretariat. Early in 2000 the Secretariat brought together the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army to focus on three issues covered by the Declaration of Principles:
· self-administration in and by the South;
· the separation of religion and state
· wealth-sharing.
The Secretariat is aware of the deep-seated differences between North and South that go back to colonial times, and also of the need for other Sudanese groups in the conflict (the Nuba, the Ingessina, the people of Abyei, and other marginalized groups in the North) to be included.
In spite of all these complexities, the ambassador believes that unity is possible in Sudan and could be achieved with a two-tier structure:
- a national secular state with freedom of religion, and;
- local state-level governments able to respect ethnic particularities.
Currently the Sudanese government believes that law for the whole of Sudan must be based on Shari'a tradition. It is willing to talk about the possibility of self-administration for the South, if the framework is that of a federal system. (The SPLA talks about self-administration within a confederal system.) That the South has the right to self-determination is an extremely problematic concept for Khartoum.
Egypt and Libya have interests that must be taken seriously by the IGAD peace process for Sudan. Although Egypt opposes the principle of self-determination for the South, these two countries cannot be ignored, Ambassador Mboya said. They need to be heard.
The Secretariat is very supportive of the Sudan and New Sudan Councils of Churches. General Bashir, President of Sudan, draws his support almost exclusively from the military, not from the people. To the Arab world, Sudan is a Muslim state. But Christians in Africa and beyond need to assert the right of the very sizable and growing percentage of Christians in Sudan to be recognized as such officially.
On March 20, 2001 in Rome the Secretariat briefed the IGAD Partners Forum, a body of Western countries supportive of the IGAD peace process to which Canada’s Senator Lois Wilson is Canada's Special Envoy. This meeting included the participation of a number of technical experts. The IGAD Secretariat has been criticized for its weakness on technical issues and solutions, but technical experts come at a high cost, and the financial resources are an urgent problem. Canada should pressure IGAD countries to treat the work towards peace in Sudan with urgency, the ambassador stated. The team thought it might be helpful to enable Daniel Mboya to come to Canada and go on to Sweden and other European countries where he could deepen understanding of the complexities and possibilities surrounding the peace process. He said oil development had become an obstacle to peace and believes that an oil moratorium would force the GOS to seriously engage in the peace process.

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	Recommendation

A. To the Government of Canada:
1. Oil Development
· Work internationally to facilitate a moratorium on all aspects of oil development in Sudan until a just and sustainable peace is achieved.
Canada could initiate consultations with other governments whose companies are operating or considering operating in Sudan (e.g. Sweden), and the U.S. which is exploring the application of capital market sanctions against companies working in Sudan.
· Take the action necessary to prevent Talisman Energy from operating in Sudan until a just and sustainable peace is achieved. If existing legislation requires amendments to make such action possible, or if new legislation is required, then a process of review should be implemented immediately.
A public statement should be issued immediately signaling Canada’s intent to initiate such a process.

2. Corporate Social Responsibility
· Amend existing or develop new legislative tools to regulate, and restrict if necessary, Canadian companies, in the extractive and other industries, operating abroad under condi