Executive Summary

The civil war in Sudan is now in danger of spreading into armed confrontation between neighbouring states. The clear message and early warning from concerned NGOs, academics, diplomats, religious bodies and analysts is that the war has the potential to embroil surrounding states with far-reaching consequences for the lives of millions in the region.

While the global authorities have been content not to be drawn into seeking a resolution to what they regard as a low-intensity internal conflict, the possible destabilising repercussions for the region and beyond necessitate action from the international community.

For thirty out of the last forty years, Sudan, the largest country in Africa, has suffered a civil war and resulting man-made humanitarian tragedy of catastrophic proportions. Sudan's war, the longest this century, is a conflict where civilians have been the main targets and victims of both sides. International attention has been focused on higher profile trouble spots with the result that this unfolding tragedy has been almost ignored, to the extent that the numbers killed, made refugees or internally displaced is largely unknown. Some estimates suggest that it may be as high as 2 million people killed and as many again forced to flee their homes.

Given the increasing precariousness of human security in Sudan and the implications for international security, it is no longer a viable policy option to continue to regard the conflict in Sudan as containable and not worth the attention of the international community.

Sudan borders nine African states. The civil war has heightened tensions in the region, leading to cross border clashes and a proliferation of weapons amongst bandits and rebels. The civil war threatens to escalate into a regional war. The likely costs to international security in terms of increased refugee flows, loss of human, economic and food security requires a positive engagement on the part of the global authorities to promote a peace process.

In 1992, the UN published proposals in Agenda for Peace which recognised that timely, non-military diplomatic interventions could prevent conflicts escalating and minimise the scale of the inevitable humanitarian disasters which result from war. CAFOD argues that the international community is morally obligated to exercise the necessary political will to sponsor and support the pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Not only does the UN, as the custodian of international security, have a moral duty to address the war in Sudan, but it also has a legal obligation to act in the interests of international security. The findings of independent observers: that there are grave and consistent abuses of fundamental human rights; that international monitors are denied access to vulnerable populations; that there can be no military victory to the war; that civilians are by and large its victims; and, that the conflict is now spreading beyond Sudan's borders - now requires the UN Security Council to be more pro-actively engaged in the search for peace.

Furthermore, CAFOD argues that for any long term peace agreement to succeed in Sudan, any peace process must integrate the political, economic, aid and social dimensions at the local, regional and national and international levels.

There can be no dispute about the primacy of the humanitarian imperative for achieving a peace for non-combatants and particularly vulnerable social groups such as women and children. Donor governments cannot continue to rely on aid as a sufficient substitute for political engagement. The demands of the humanitarian imperative necessitate a thoroughgoing engagement by the international community in Africa's forgotten war.

Historical Background

Mediaeval Islamic geographers referred to Sudan as Bilad al Sudan"the land of the blacks". The country straddles land between the Arab Mahgreb and the green lands of the African world. This geographical division was reinforced during the rule of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, between 1886-1956, which sought to contain Arab and Islamic influence in Africa to north of the Sahara. Exploiting cultural differences, the British sustained colonial rule by reinforcing the identity of social groups, thereby accentuating historic ethnic and religious polarities.

In the South, the British opened Christian missionary organisations but withheld economic development. As a result, today much of southern Sudan remains without basic communications infrastructures and highly dependent on external sources of aid.

In the North, the colonial administration set out to preserve the cultural and social interests of the conservative supporters of the Mahdi movement. This policy left the South and West effectively cut off from the North, and also from the rest of the world.

In the 1930s and 1940s, nationalist political activities in the North developed rapidly. Catalysed by internal and external pressures associated with the Second World War, political developments in the North supported by Egypt led to independence. In 1947, the British convened a conference in Juba where southern concerns about domination by the North were discussed. However, despite assurances, partition and even federal alternatives were left out at independence. As a result, many southerners today feel Britain has an historic obligation to seek a redress for their grievances that had been aired at that time.

In 1955, on the eve of independence, southern Sudanese soldiers mutinied after being ordered to Khartoum without their arms, beginning the civil war that in essence persists today. The only period when the fighting ceased followed the signing of the Addis Ababa agreement in 1972 which based the unity of Sudan on recognition of regional autonomy for the South and the ending of discrimination on the basis of gender or religion.

New tensions arose in the early 1980s when President Nimeiri attempted to sustain his government's political legitimacy amidst economic collapse through the mobilisation of Islamic symbols and the introduction of sharia law throughout Sudan. This and the redrawing of Sudan's northern region to encompass the newly discovered oil fields gave birth to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLA) headed by Colonel John Garang.

In 1985, Nimeiri was ousted in a popular coup d'etat. The new military rulers set up a Transitional Military Council and promised elections making way for a coalition government with the Democratic Unionist Party and headed by the Umma Party leader, Sadiq Al Mahdi.

Despite the financial support of Saudi Arabia, the pressure of one million refugees outside of Khartoum, a deteriorating economy and the cost of the war (estimated at US$1 million a day) left the Al Mahdi coalition seeking political support from the National Islamic Front (NIF).

In 1988, the coalition partners, the DUP concluded a peace agreement with the SPLA which promised, a degree of economic and political subsidiarity to the regions, a lifting of the state of emergency and, crucially, the suspension of sharia law.

The NIF party left the coalition on the issue of abandoning the sharia. On 30 June 1989, days before the intended implementation of the peace accord, General Omar al-Bashir mounted a military coup. Forming the Revolutionary Command Council, the military proclaimed martial law, suspended the constitution and banned all political parties. It soon emerged that members and sympathisers of the NIF occupied all important posts and the NIF's programmatic Islamic fundamentalism directed all political developments.

The Government of Sudan (GOS) still maintains its ban on all political parties and insists that the political system and national legislature will follow the Islamic principle of Shura or consultation.

Following the 1996 elections to the state legislature, the NIF ideological eminence grise, Dr Mohammed al-Turabi, was elected Speaker of the Sudanese Parliament.

Human Rights and Civil War

The tragic reality of Sudan's civil war is that its victims are mostly civilians and non-combatants. All sides in the war have been accused of gross and consistent violations of fundamental human rights and humanitarian law.

The Sudanese authorities have been accused by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and African Rights of carrying out arbitrary arrests, indefinite detention without trial, kidnapping, torture, forced acculturation and conversion to Islam, the enforced recruitment of children to become child soldiers and the acceptance of effective slavery.

In the South, the armed opposition of the SPLA/M and the South Sudan Independence Movement/Army (SSIM/A) have been accused by Amnesty International of the massacres of large groups of civilians, of rape and murder, of the coercion of groups for food production and the abduction of children for soldiery.

It is alleged that the GOS counter-insurgency operation has singled out civilian populations as the source of logistical support for rebel combatants. As a result, villages are targeted in scorched-earth operations. Houses are burned, livestock and food stolen, women are raped, young men are killed or forcibly conscripted and wells poisoned. This pattern of operations is followed by all of Sudan's factions, militias, allies and proxies.

The SPLA have made claims that their forces have significantly improved their human rights record since 1991. But according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the senior members of the SPLA have remained defensive when confronted by evidence of actual abuses. They have yet to seriously address this issue by setting out transparent mechanisms by which to investigate and punish any human rights abuses committed by their forces.

The civil war cannot be sufficiently explained as a war between an Arab North and an African South. The conflict has spread to exacerbate southern Sudan's historic ethnic rivalries. The huge proliferation of small automatic weapons and Khartoum's co-option and militarisation of particular ethnic groups to act as proxies in the South, such as the Baggara and Rezeigat, has significantly escalated tensions and the levels of fatalities, increased factional tensions and exacerbated the deterioration of relations between various exiled refugee communities.

Thus far all sides in the conflict have refused the free movement of human rights monitors within areas under their control. In 1993 the United Nations Commission on Human Rights appointed a Special Rapporteur, Mr Gaspar Biro, to research and report on the human rights situation in Sudan. His reports have been critical of all parties involved in the war, and the government in particular has reacted very strongly. His 1996 report had to be written from outside Sudan as the government had refused him permission to enter the country, a situation that has only recently changed (August 1996).

The government in Khartoum defends its record by pointing to its laws banning slavery and its constitutional provisions respecting the rights of religious freedom. However, in practice the authorities do nothing to safeguard the rights of communities and individuals. The GOS forestalls the entry of international human rights observers citing the primacy of national sovereignty.

CAFOD argues that international observers cannot be excluded on the basis of national sovereignty. Rights of national sovereignty imply certain responsibilities derived from commitments to international treaties and conventions. The international community will find the assurances of the SPLM/A, the SSIM/A and the Khartoum government credible only when all parties permit independent observers access to areas where they can monitor measures taken to uphold basic human rights.

Until access is granted, the GOS stands accused of breaking its international undertakings as a signatory to the Conventions on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on Human Rights. The factions in the south also stand accused of gross and consistent violations of human rights and humanitarian law.

The Economy and Underdevelopment

The civil war has aggravated and reinforced chronic poverty and economic underdevelopment throughout Sudan. It has accelerated environmental degradation and increased the levels of armed confrontation over scarce resources in one of the poorest countries in the world.

The Sudanese economy is primarily agricultural. Over 80 per cent of the population are engaged in animal husbandry. In the 1970s, as a result of pressure from the World Bank to follow its blueprint for the whole of Africa, Sudanese agricultural development embarked on a strategy of increasing large-scale commodity production for export.

At the expense of small-scale agricultural schemes, scarce development resources were diverted to the mechanisation of grain production and irrigated cotton schemes. Many of the beneficiaries of this investment were the wealthiest segments of society with capital to invest. The negative impact of the switch to large-scale farming for export included a drop in domestic food production for local consumption during the 1980s and a growing dependence on imports of subsidised US food aid.

The implementation of Sudan's Structural Adjustment Programme, taken together with similar economic programmes imposed on other heavily indebted countries, inevitably led to a glut of global commodities and concomitant falls in the prices of commodity exports.

When combined with competitive devaluations, the policy for Sudan resulted in continuous increases in output but reductions in foreign exchange income. In addition, the prescriptions of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) compounded the rise in prices in essential foodstuffs by removing government subsidies. The cuts in government expenditure, were borne most heavily by social expenditure and were followed by falling standards in health care, clean water and basic nutritional supplies. But the cuts were not mirrored by reductions in government administration costs or in the military expenditure necessary for prosecuting the war. Expenditure in these sectors tripled in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) failed to take account of the nature of the Sudanese economy - where the relationship between the state and metropolitan elites in civil society is characterised by informal connections. The patronage of the state has become the sine qua non of personal enrichment in Sudanese society. While this is in part due to the function of the state in central economic planning, it is also a result of the Khartoum government's position as the fount of political patronage and personal economic gain.

As a result, the policies of the Sudanese state have come to represent the interests of the metropolitan elites. During the 1980s it was the military, the mercantile class, landowners and bureaucrats. In the 1990s, the supremacy of NIF has favoured those with close ties to the military and government.

The accumulation of assets by the elites has led to the increasing exclusion of Sudan's dispossessed. In the absence of alternative sources of credit lines, small-scale farmers have increasingly come to depend on a few traders. The state's declining revenue and contracting social base has severely constrained its room for manoeuvre and ability to act on behalf of the general population, still less meeting the needs of vulnerable population groups.

Sudan's domestic economic constraints are paralleled by its standing with overseas creditors. The country's total debt in 1994 stood at over US $17 billion and in 1995 it held the world's largest IMF debt at US $ 1.7 billion. The Sudanese state is poised on the brink of being blacklisted by the Fund which would effectively cut it off from most Western financial aid and credit sources.

The IMF's focus in the ongoing negotiations with the GOS centre on Khartoum's financial rectitude and its ability to meet short term monetary targets.

CAFOD argues that an end to the civil war is an essential precondition for balanced and sustainable growth in Sudan. If the IMF is operating on the principle of promoting development, its programme designs should have as their central objective the reconstruction of civil society and its capacity to contribute to a peace process.

The precarious financial position of the GOS represents a potentially important lever for the international community to exert pressure to force it to respect fundamental human rights and to move it towards engaging in a peace process with neighbouring states and internal armed groups.

Recent rioting in Khartoum following rises in bus fares suggests that the legitimacy of the GOS with its domestic constituency is dependent on providing minimal conditions of economic well-being. In this regard the support outside financial institutions is critical.

Given that the Fund is apparently able to extract far-reaching economic reforms from the government, it should also be able to complement its commitment to economic development by applying additional pressures to ensure the GOS actively pursues a political engagement with the various armed groupings and its neighbouring states.

In addition to political conditions, international financial institutions such as the Fund and World Bank, should push for changes which reward the establishment of a transparent relationship between the state and the economy; curtail the government's military spending, and; encourage the state to purge corruption and to promote the interests, assets and power base of the poor.

At present, the war and the widespread poverty in Sudan reinforce each other. The human tragedy of the country is compounded by the civil war's exclusion of the mass of its people from taking full advantage of the fertile lands of the South and the massive potential offered by the country's mineral and oil reserves. Instead, the haemorrhaging of the country's economy and political system has left Sudan with massive debts, hyper-inflation and a currency now virtually worthless.

If multilateral and bilateral credit sources do not act to support programmes which are targeted at the majority of Sudanese, a lasting and just peace will not be achieved.

Sudan and the regional context

The civil war in Sudan threatens to expand into a heightened armed confrontation between Sudan and neighbouring states.

However, the global authorities appear intent on conducting a policy of supplying humanitarian aid and, the US in particular, of aiding the armed resistance to the Khartoum's programme of Islamic fundamentalism. Washington has categorised Sudan as one of a handful of countries that support and promote international terrorism, and its policies towards Sudan are very much shaped by this view.

Overtly, the US has been pushing the UN Security Council to adopt punitive measures against Khartoum for failing to comply with demands for the extradition of the alleged perpetrators of the assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in June 1995. UN Resolutions 1044 and 1054 have imposed diplomatic sanctions, but make no attempt to address the ongoing civil war.

Covertly, Washington is alleged to be supplying logistical support to Sudan's hostile neighbours and the SPLA in their bases in neighbouring states. The strategy's objective appears to be targeted at undermining the Khartoum government by sustaining a "low-intensity" civil war.

However, Sudan's long debilitating war is now dragging in its neighbours and represents new dangers for the region and global security.

Large numbers of refugees and political exiles have sought sanctuary and now act in support of military rear bases in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda. The response of Khartoum has been to sponsor dissident elements and armed rebels opposed to the governments of those states.

While Uganda has for several years openly supported the largest rebel movement, the SPLA/M, Khartoum is retaliating by supporting the Lord's Resistance Army and the West Nile Bank Front in northern Uganda. As with the conflict in Sudan, these armed rebels chiefly target civilians in their unfocused and murderous campaign against Kampala. Despite talks in June 1995 between Presidents Museveni and Al-Bashir and the announced agreement to conduct mutual policies of non-interference, it appears that the relations between the two countries remains tense. In 1995 and 1996, inter-state tensions escalated to include air raids on Ugandan villages and refugee camps in border areas.

Eritrea and Ethiopia, themselves recovering from 3 decades of civil war, have faced incursions and destabilisation efforts by the GOS. Eritrea accuses Sudan of encouraging insurrectionary movements amongst Islamic militants in Eritrea's North West region, while Eritrea itself has hosted conferences of Sudanese political and armed opposition groups in Asmara. Similarly, Ethiopia leads international calls for the ostracism of Khartoum for its failure to extradite those accused of the assassination attempt against Mubarak.

Sudan's relations with Kenya are tense and factional conflicts of Southern Sudanese groups, often encouraged by Khartoum, have spread to refugee camps in Kenya.

This patchwork of disputes with and between most of the states bordering Sudan, will be of increasing concern to the international community, and particularly the United States, if the tensions between Sudan and its northern neighbour Egypt worsen.

Egypt is perhaps the most pivotal state within the Middle East and its government is vulnerable to the destabilising efforts of the fundamentalist Islamic group, the Muslim Brotherhood. Its shadowy terrorist supporters, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Gamaat Islamiyya are thought to be supported by Khartoum. While Cairo supports the "opposition in exile" - the National Democratic Alliance, which advocates the overthrow of the GOS by force, its recent vacillations in the UN suggest its approach to Khartoum is dictated by its strategic priority of preventing any Sudanese party being strong enough to be capable of blackmailing it through control of the headwaters of the Nile.

The consequences of a wider conflagration will have grave consequences for the human, political, economic and environmental security of the whole Horn of Africa and, potentially, consequences for the most volatile region in the world, the Middle East. The humanitarian case for the international community to exercise a greater political will in pushing for a just solution to Sudan is overwhelming. But strategic priorities and the likely humanitarian consequences of a fully blown regional conflict in the Horn of Africa place the imperative for action firmly in the orbit of the international community's own interest.

Thus far the global authorities have been content to allow a policy of supplying humanitarian aid to act as substitute for diplomatic initiatives on the civil war. Although very little aid is now channelled to the GOS, the international community has not used its considerable leverage afforded by controlling position in the International Financial Institutions to further its calls for human rights and good governance, or to encourage factional reconciliation in southern Sudan.

At present the United Nations Security Council, has condemned Sudan's government for acts of state-sponsored terrorism - principally the assassination attempt against Mubarak. The destabilising influence of the Khartoum government, however, spreads beyond a single act of terrorism against a world leader.

The US policy of destabilising the Khartoum regime serves only to fuel a regional instability which will not respect borders and has the potential to engulf precarious governments - most notably Egypt. This policy is highly unlikely to prevent the Khartoum government from continuing to prosecute its war in the South and, while southern factions are supported by neighbouring states, Khartoum is likely to maintain its own destabilisation efforts against them.

The current cycle of events is disrupting national development objectives in one of the poorest areas of the world and the humanitarian consequences of a widened conflagration throughout the Horn of Africa, capable of engulfing the Middle East, are too large to fathom.

CAFOD argues that the international community not only has a moral obligation to act in support of a peace process, but that the possible implications for international security of a regionalised conflict urgently require positive engagement by the global authorities on the basis of their own strategic and national self-interests.

Framework for Peace

The huge area covered by Sudan, together with its underdeveloped communications infrastructure, the diversity of its human geography and the relative immaturity of the Sudanese nation state are a recipe for political instability. In this context an outright military victory by one side is not possible. The fragmentation and volatility of alliances between ethnic and political groupings require a peace process that encompasses multiple solutions and all elements of Sudanese society.

Aid and the reconstitution of civil society

The arming of militias and the militarisation of ethnic groups to act as proxies has led to the proliferation of localised conflicts within the larger civil war. Some analysts have suggested that Sudan is on the threshold of becoming "another Afghanistan", where the militarisation and armed belligerency of all sectors of civil society becomes so comprehensive that war degenerates into a series of interminable localised conflicts.

A successful enduring peace agreement will largely be dependent on the global authorities acting to assist the Sudanese in developing a culture of peace across the multi-faceted divisions across the country. Achieving such an outcome will need the co-ordination of efforts at local, regional, national and international levels. Diplomacy among warring factions, however, will be largely irrelevant if it is not sustained through other processes which address political, economic, environmental and ethnic rights issues in a co-ordinated manner.

Any peace process needs therefore to operate at different levels and be geographically dispersed. In particular it should seek to set up confidence-building mechanisms at the local, regional and national levels. It is envisaged that such a plan would tackle the issue of civil and political reconstruction through a complementarity of approach between its political, economic, diplomatic and aid dimensions.

Aid agency activities at the local level should be working to complement efforts to empower non-military groups in a process of rehabilitation and reconciliation.

There is a historical precedence for this in Sudan. In 1994, a successful peace conference was held in southern Sudan to address a conflict between two sections of the Nuer tribe. Local authorities participated, but the chiefs of the two sections - the Lou and Jikany - were the mediators and implementers of the agreement. The discussions were assisted by a small grant from a church with a long presence in the area.

In order to facilitate such exercises, humanitarian agencies will need to shift their approach to assistance to complement efforts to reconstitute forums for conflict resolution. This strategy focuses directly on the chiefs, churches, women's organisations, and other non-military groups to build and sustain a grassroots "citizen diplomacy".

Such a block-building approach views the reconciliation of local communities as a foundation towards building a national settlement. The process may include granting amnesties, reparations and the demobilisation, integration and disarming of militias. "Peace committees" based in southern Sudan should be able to consolidate systems of social control to supervise the disarmament processes and ensure that demobilisation does not lead to increased levels of banditry and the supply of weaponry on the black market.

Hitherto, the political insecurity associated with the civil war has left many donor funded development programmes stagnating and shifting their work to delivering relief aid at the expense of longer term development work. However, emergency responses to crises should not preclude monitoring and assessing the impact of assistance, so that the warring factions are not the material or political beneficiaries of aid. Donors must therefore be allowed to make the delivery of aid conditional on access being granted to independent investigators who would ensure that aid is being used properly to empower and build civilian as opposed to military capacity.

CAFOD argues that by itself a peace agreement between North and South Sudan will not be sufficient to sustain a just and lasting peace. The participation of the spectrum of all civil and military sectors in such a process will be indispensable. The outcome of an intervention from outside, without the support from indigenous social actors risks repeating the UN debacle in Somalia in 1992.

A national framework

As a prelude to a national dialogue, outside bodies, particularly the United States and Ethiopia, should be focusing their efforts on initially creating a dialogue between the SPLA and remnants of the SSIM/A. As part of this process, agreements need to be struck on the return of displaced populations, the return of refugees to their places of origin and the setting up of "peace committees" and an over-arching inclusive governing Southern Sudan Co-ordinating Council.

Historically, Khartoum's insistence on the policy of imposing the sharia appears to have been the major obstacle to the successful national peace process between Khartoum and the South. The present NIF leadership appears intent on an ever stricter adherence to the Islamic legal code and promoting a process of Islamisation. If the Sudan is to maintain territorial integrity as a unified state, then any long term political dispensation will have to be based on the recognition of Sudan's religious and cultural diversity. Christian and Muslim leaders should be encouraged to try to establish standing fora to promote dialogue and toleration.

In April 1996 the GOS signed a new "Political Charter" with the second largest of the southern movements, the Southern Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM). In this fourteen point document the signatories agree to the recognition of cultural and religious diversity within Sudan. They also agree to defend and maintain the existing borders of the country, at the same time as planning for a referendum on the future of the south. Most southerners who were not formerly supportive of the SSIM claim that the signing of the document was signed by the SSIM leaders purely to ensure their own leadership positions and they do not trust the GOS to fulfil either the letter or the spirit of the document. The GOS will need to be seen to be freely implementing the articles of the Charter, especially in those areas of the south under its control, if it hopes to persuade the SPLM.

The international context

A valuable opportunity for a peace dialogue was lost by the breakdown of the IGAD talks in 1994, when Khartoum's representatives presented the issue of the sharia as non-negotiable.

The enormous challenge of conflict resolution in Sudan will require the logistical support and mediation from outside states. Although the IGAD forum remains in suspension it was the most successful of several initiatives to open dialogue that were taken during the 1990's. The Friends of IGAD - a group of northern states that helped to support and promote the IGAD discussions - should be encouraged to help find a way to restart the IGAD process. This might be achieved by proposing the widening of the IGAD participation to include new members perceived to be more neutral than the present membership: Tanzania, for example or South Africa. Also, the OAU, which has until now remained quite aloof from the problems of Sudan should take a more leading role.

CAFOD argues that Britain, as a key member of the Friends of IGAD, should bring all its influence to bear to help to find a new and innovative way forward for the reconvening of the peace process.

Similarly, the US will have to shift its strategy away from its current focus on strengthening the military capability of neighbouring states and the SPLA. Rather, outside states should be aiming to assist in the reconstitution of Sudanese civil society. This approach, focusing on capacity-building and rehabilitation, seeks to support Sudanese civil society against its subordination by armed leaderships.

If the current US strategy continues, the outlook for the civilian population remains grim. Even if such a policy were to succeed in overthrowing the Bashir regime, it will have been achieved at the cost of enormous suffering and on the back of a decimated civil society. Such an outcome would do great damage to the prospects for rehabilitation and enduring peace.

While the EU has an arms embargo against Sudan and Sudanese factions, China, East European states, the US and Middle Eastern states are all thought to be adding to the proliferation of weapons in Sudan's conflict.

The international community, through the United Nations, should collectively resolve to pursue a peace process by enforcing a comprehensive arms embargo.

Members of the Security Council, with their very real concerns for international security, and indeed their national self-interests, have a direct stake in actively pursuing a peace process rather than feeding logistical support to the current "low-intensity" conflict.

CAFOD argues that the humanitarian imperative and the likely consequences of a continuing war in Sudan require a new approach on the part of the global authorities. Indeed, the international community, in the shape of the United Nations Security Council, is obligated under international law to engage in pursuit of a peace strategy. According to Article 24 of the United Nations Charter, the United Nations:

 

...confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.

And in this context:

The Security Council shall determine the existences of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken... to maintain or restore international peace and security.

With the crucial role played by external donor community and the International Monetary Fund in Sudan's politics and economy, the international community has a number of key instruments with which to apply pressure on all layers of society to assist the search for a just and durable peace.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

This paper is a response to the deteriorating situation in Sudan, the intensifying civil war within the country and the growing evidence that the conflict is being exported to neighbouring states. The main consequence of the civil war has been to impoverish and damage the development prospects of states which are still in the process of recovering from internal conflicts of their own.

The victims are mainly the civilians of those countries which, by and large, have no power to influence the decisions taken by the leaders of the groups engaged in conflict. Not only are the normal mechanisms of self support being disrupted or destroyed, but the continuation and spread of the conflict has now imperilled many more thousands. More people are facing a future of homelessness, of being forced to become refugees and becoming ever more dependent on the wider international community for their survival.

Human Rights

Aid

Economic Assistance

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2 "Tie Humanitarian Assistance to Substantive Reform" by John Prendergast [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1995, Washington]

3 "Humanitarian intervention and crisis response in Africa" by John Prendergast [Crosslines Global Report, June/September 1995]

4 "Sudan A Cry for Peace" by Jan Gruiters & Efrem Tresoldi [Pax Christi International 1994, Brussels]

5 "Behind the Red Line: Political Repression in Sudan - Human Rights Watch" by Jemera Rone [Human Rights Watch Publications, 1996, New York]

6 "Abuses by all Parties in the War in Sudan" Human Rights Watch Africa [Human Rights Watch, 1995, London]

7 "Tears of Orphans" - Amnesty International [Amnesty International Publications, 1995, London]

8 "Denying the Honour of Living" - Africa Watch [Human Rights Watch, 1996, London]

9 "State of the World's Refugees" - UNHCR [Oxford University Press, 1995, Oxford]

10 "Africa Confidential" - Publications and oral briefing [Africa Confidential, 1995-1996, London]

11 "The History of Sudan" - by PM Holt and MW Daly [Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979, London]

12 "Sudan - Progress or Public Relations" - Amnesty International [Amnesty International Publications, 1996, London]

13 "Civil War in Sudan: The Impact of Ecological Degradation" - by Mohammed Suliman [ENCOP, 1992, Bern & Zurich]

14 "Southern Sudan: Too Many Agreements Dishonoured" by Abel Alier [Ithaca Press,1990, Exeter]

15 "Debt Crisis Network" [Briefings, 1996, London]

16 "ACP - EU Joint Assembly Report on Mission to Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia" by Lord Plumb, Mr Boulle, Mrs Kinnock and Mrs Robinson [ACP,1995, Brussels]

Information Sources and Services, CAFOD Policy Briefings,

 
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