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Statement from the New Sudan Council of
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Dear Friends,
I greet you in the name of our merciful and loving Lord Jesus Christ.
The birth of a new era of post-war Sudan has occurred. The once assumed impossibility became a reality in God’s own timing and divine plan. By a stroke of a pen at 12.30 pm East African time, on Sunday January 9th, Africa’s longest civil war in Africa’s largest country, formally came to an end with the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement witnessed by scores of Heads of State and governments as well as representatives of the international community. Tears of joy spontaneously rolled on the faces of the Sudanese accompanied with ululations and reverberations of drums of Africa as Sudan’s Vice President Dr Ali Osman Taha and Chairman of Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) signed the peace accord.
The euphoria that has been triggered by this historic event is unprecedented in this part of our world. We are still celebrating in the hope that Sudan will never be the same again. The celebration has spilt over beyond Sudan. For the Horn of Africa, the political landscape has changed. The Horn of Africa has been one of the most fragile crisis regions in the world over the past decades displaying a mixture of wars, the breakdown of States, hunger, abject poverty and untold human misery. The signing of the Sudan peace agreement followed a peace pact for Somalia both signed in Kenya within months.
Leaders expressed the hope that Sudan peace agreement will have a positive impact on Darfur towards ending the civil war. Equally so, it marked the beginning of the end of war in northern Uganda since Khartoum government will no longer have a reason to harbour Ugandan rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Sudan. The peace pacts for Sudan and Somalia should also translate into the end of the menace created by the proliferation of small arms and light weapons in the region and cross-boarder armed conflicts. That is part of the bigger picture.
The Sunday occasion was witnessed by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Presidents of the three East African States – Mwai Kibaki (host) Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) and Benjamin Mkapa (Tanzania). Others included presidents Abdelaziz Boutefika (Algeria), Paul Kagame (Rwanda), Mohammed Abdullah Yusuf (Somalia), Domiten Ndayizeye (Burundi), Ismail Omar Guelleh (Djibouti), and Vice Presidents Abu Bakar Atiku (Nigeria), Jacob Zuna (South Africa), Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, heads of delegations from Yemen, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, the Netherlands, Qatar, the Ukraine, Pakistan, Canada, Italy, Egypt, Eritrea, Luxembourg and the United Nations, heads of United Arab League and the European Union.
Former Heads of States were not left behind either and they included the architect of the peace initiative former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, Sudan’s former leaders Col Gafaar Numeiry and A. Shawar al Dhab as well as former Ghanaian leader Jerry Rawlings. Their presence signified the importance they attached to the peace accord.
In time, the euphoria will settle down and the reality of daunting tasks ahead will hit the Sudanese like a thunderbolt. The implementation of the peace accord is by itself a major challenge. The following are some of the exacting challenges ahead:
- Monitoring of the peace process: The Sudanese learnt a bitter lesson from the 1972 Addis Ababa peace pact (brokered by the ecumenical movement), which collapsed due to lack of effective monitoring mechanism. The continued support of the international community and the accompaniment of our partners will be extremely crucial. Equally so effective and focused advocacy must continue. We therefore humbly request the Sudan Ecumenical Forum and all our partners to continue to play their frontline role in monitoring process.
- Social reconstruction: Sudan has been at war within itself since 1955 except for a brief interlude of peace between 1972 to 1983. Consequently, family ties have been severed as an estimated four million refugees roam the world in search of safety and livelihood, two million killed; a huge number of women were widowed. In short, the Sudanese have been terrorized and traumatized by the protracted war, which destroyed the integrity of social systems. The Sudanese will have to be helped to rediscover a meaning to their lives while communities and groups are assisted to reinvent shared meaning to their lives. In our view, this can only be possible through healing of our society and effective trauma therapy. SPLA/M has already challenged NSCC to undertake this challenge while we must accept the challenge as a fellowship of churches; we are aware that church leaders too have been traumatized and need healing before they can undertake the healing of their society. This again, is a task that will require the support of the church in Africa and the ecumenical movement. This task is urgent. It has to be achieved or it can be an obstacle to the desired human development.
- Interfaith relations: South Sudan has never been exposed to healthy interfaith relations. The war itself has partly been religiously motivated. As such Muslims and Christians have been at daggers drawn. On the other hand, restoration of broken families between North (predominantly Muslims) and South Sudan (predominantly Christians) will require the promotion of interfaith relations; otherwise the government of national unity launched by the signing of the peace agreement will remain hollow if it does not involve the people. Muslim Southern Sudanese who have lived in the North have expressed the desire to return to their ancestral homes in the South. This again is an inevitable task, which must be addressed, and the challenge falls squarely on the shoulders of the Church in the South. We will need the support of the ecumenical movement particularly those who have gained experience in the promotion of interfaith relations.
- Reconciliation: Given the experience of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Sierra Leone among others, we are aware that Sudan, rich in natural resources may not be spared by the international consortium of criminals who seek to exploit such resources by destabilizing regimes. When regimes are destabilized or allow themselves to be destabilized, central authority collapses and exploitation of resources become easy without control. They use the citizens and fuel war financed by the same exploited resources. We will need to be on the guard and ensure that reconciliation is effective. We at NSCC have a section known as Reconcile, which is currently involved in activities relating to reconciliation and Early Warning Mechanism. We hope to strengthen these activities.
- Repatriation: While the international community, including United Nations High Commission for Refugees have indicated that they would help meet the huge cost of repatriation of the Sudanese refugees, it is expected that churches in the South and International NGOs would provide the initial reception centers where the work of rehabilitation will also start. Already, hundreds of refugees have started flowing back home. Churches do not have appropriate structures for their reception in place and have sent out urgent appeals for support by the partners. The reception centers would later be used as schools and for training for development of skills for nation building.
- Landmines: It is estimated that southern Sudan and parts of eastern Sudan are contaminated with as much as two million antipersonnel landmines. These will continue to kill our people long after the peace accord and slow the pace of development. It is crucial that our fields should support life instead of being traps of destruction. We appreciate work being done by our partner DanChurchAid in landmines clearance and hope that with the new peace era, more of our partners will team up with the international organizations to both clean up our fields and through advocacy ensure that the new government of national unity observe the Ottawa Mine Free World Treaty.
- Civic Education: Civic Education will be crucial in the immediate six-year transitional period leading to a referendum. Citizens have to be developed to understand the values of good governance and accountability. They have to appreciate that while the government has duties and responsibilities, they too have duties and responsibilities. Civic education will need to be a continuous process so that the Sudanese can participate in the referendum as informed people.
- Rehabilitation: One of the major tasks of the church and the civic society will involve harmonious integration of returnees into their respective communities. The challenge will be compounded by the fact that most of the returnees are youth who have never been to Sudan since their birth outside their country. They are thus likely to suffer from a cultural shock. Churches will therefore go an extra mile in the work of rehabilitation.
All through the cruel past, the church lived with the poor and the suffering. The church will continue to be with the voiceless and watch out for human rights abuses.
South Sudan as you are aware has been stuck in a time-warp. Time stood still as bombs wrecked everything. No development infrastructure could be realized. However, with support, the faith and resilience of the Sudanese demonstrated during the prolonged war combined with its potential wealth, Sudan can take off to great heights of success.
It is our prayer that the dawning of a new era in Sudan will benefit humankind worldwide.
Rev. Dr. Haruun Ruun
Executive Secretary
New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC)
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