U.S. and European Media

November 14, 2022

ENOUGH: An All-Sudan Solution: Linking Darfur and the South. As tensions between the North and South of Sudan continue to mount, the Darfur movement – and the policymakers and negotiators working on Sudan – must broaden their efforts to achieve a sustainable and comprehensive solution for all of Sudan, according to an ENOUGH Project strategy paper released today. Authored by Roger Winter, a Sudan expert who helped to broker the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the North and South, and John Prendergast, co-chair of the ENOUGH Project, the report details the linkages between Darfur and the rest of Sudan and the need for a holistic approach in efforts to restore peace to the country. “The end to Sudan’s crises rests in a common solution: a country-wide democratic transformation that is driven by strong, internationally monitored peace agreements for the South, Darfur, and the East and delivered through the timely, free and fair elections mandated by the CPA,” says Winter. ENOUGH states that the ruling National Congress Party’s multiple efforts to undermine the CPA have greatly endangered the tenuous peace in the region. ENOUGH calls on the U.S. to ramp up its diplomatic investments and efforts to work multilaterally, including increased pressure on any party attempting to undermine peace; strengthen U.S. and broader international support for the CPA; and discontinue any plan to entertain negotiations outside the framework provided by the CPA, a course of action that could actually hasten a return to war in the South.

Agence France-Presse: Fears for Darfuri asylum seekers after British court ruling. Britain's highest court on Wednesday overturned a ruling that the government was acting unlawfully by sending Darfuri asylum seekers back to squatter camps in Sudan. Campaigners voiced disappointment at the ruling, saying it opened the way for hundreds to be sent back after fleeing the violence-torn Sudanese province of Darfur. Three Law Lords rejected the Court of Appeal's judgment in April that sending refugees back to camps was "unduly harsh", saying such action was not unreasonable and there was insufficient evidence they could face torture. They said the lower court had been wrong to reverse the initial ruling by an asylum and immigration tribunal, which dismissed a challenge by three Darfuri men against their deportation. British charity The Aegis Trust, which campaigns against genocide worldwide, supported the Darfuris in their bid to stay in Britain. He said the Law Lords' decision could pave the way for hundreds of Darfuris to be sent back to Sudan unless the government changed its policy and halted removals until the situation there improved.

Reuters: Darfur rebel factions reunite under one banner. Six breakaway factions from one of Darfur's biggest rebel groups and two other insurgent forces said on Tuesday they had united under one banner, in a rare but tentative show of unity in the troubled region. Representatives from the groups meeting in South Sudan's capital Juba said they had signed a Charter of Unification, bringing together splinter factions of the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and other fighters. Observers gave the move a cautious welcome, but pointed out most of Darfur's leading rebel names were missing from the new body, chief among them SLA founder Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur and representatives from the powerful SLA-Unity faction. "We are significant groups that are coming together," said Al-Hadi Adabeldour, spokesman of the United Revolutionary Forces Front, a group he said was made up of mainly Arab fighters.

Agence France-Presse: Bush to meet South Sudan leader Nov 15. US President George W. Bush will meet with South Sudan leader Salva Kiir on November 15 for talks focused on ending violence in the country's Darfur province, the White House said Tuesday. "The two leaders will discuss implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the situation in Darfur, and the status of ongoing peace talks to end the violence there," said spokeswoman Dana Perino. Kiir, who is first vice president of Sudan's government of national unity, said in Washington last week that his former rebels would stay out of the national government in Khartoum until a 2005 peace deal is fully implemented. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who spoke to AFP at the end of a three-day trip to Brazil, endorsed the upcoming meeting. "I hope that President Bush and Salva Kiir will have a good meeting on the ways and means to implement the CPA," he said. In September, ministers with Kiir's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) quit the Khartoum government in protest at slow progress in implementing the CPA, which ended Africa's longest-running civil war in 2005.

Agence France-Presse: World must target crimes against humanity in 2008: Jolie. Prosecuting perpetrators of genocide and other crimes against humanity is the best way to prevent further atrocities, actress Angelina Jolie said, urging tougher action in 2008. "Accountability is perhaps the only force powerful enough to break the cycle of violence and retribution that marks so many conflicts," the Hollywood star wrote in The Economist magazine's "The World in 2008", out on Wednesday. The actress, who is a goodwill ambassador to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said she hoped the coming year will see the international community seek "true accountability" for victims, particularly in Darfur. "Through accountability we can begin the process of righting past wrongs, and even change the behavior of some of the world's worst criminals," she said. Jolie said she had met a teenage boy from Darfur on a recent UNHCR mission to a refugee camp in neighbouring Chad who said he wanted those responsible to be put on trial. "I hope that the Sudanese government will hand over the government minister and the Janjaweed militia leader who have been indicted for war crimes by the (International Criminal Court in The Hague), and that the teenager I met in Chad will get the trial he seeks," she added.

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