Social Science Research Council

On 16 May, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) celebrates the day it was founded when two Southern-based battalions of the Sudanese army mutinied in 1983. This year as the SPLM marks its 26th anniversary, a number of factors will make the celebrations profoundly different from any the movement has ever experienced.
Anniversaries often provide a [...]

Supporters of US oil sanctions on Khartoum, and who are in many cases supporters of the SPLM, are strangely silent with respect to its impact on South Sudan. Yet nowhere is the case of the “unintended consequences” of sanctions more clearly apparent than on this vital sector of South Sudan’s fragile economy.
US policy-makers [...]

Overview
1. The NCP-SPLM partnership for the CPA stands at a critical juncture. The NCP sees the 2009 elections as its route to internal and international legitimacy and is hoping that problems with the census and elections can be pinned on others (the SPLM, the Darfurians). Both parties have failed to find a compromise to the Abyei [...]

Land is a central issue in both rural and urban Sudan and contests over land claims have been a recurrent cause of unrest and conflict in the country. Successive reforms of land law have not resulted in a unified framework for land tenure across the country, but to the contrary strengthened the hand of the [...]

Overview
1. The crisis in the CPA unfolded with a speed that was both unexpected and alarming. At the time of writing, the SPLM and NCP have patched up their differences. But the repercussions of the crisis will continue in Sudanese politics for some time.
2. The crisis has revealed and accelerated underlying political trends. The major dimensions [...]

Posted on behalf of Hassan E. Talib. Hassan is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS), in Khartoum, Sudan
Press conference diplomacy has been resorted to by Sudanese partners of Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed between Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and government of Sudan in Nairobi, Kenya, on January 9, 2005. [...]

Posted on behalf of Peter Schumann, a former UNDP staff member with extensive experience in UN Peacekeeping operations, most recently as the Regional Coordinator and Representative of UNMIS in Southern Sudan

One of the last activities I was involved with was facilitating to strengthen the political relationship between the SPLM and the ‘Darfur Rebels’–we had two very important meetings in Juba, pre and post Abuja.

Moments of crisis are also moments of opportunity. Sudan at the present has all the dimensions of an imminent crisis that could unravel the major achievements of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the uncertain progress towards democracy.
The sharpest manifestation of the crisis is the SPLM’s suspension of its participation in the Government of National Unity, [...]

Too much of the attention to Darfur has overlooked that it is part of Sudan, and that a peace agreement in Darfur makes sense only as a buttress to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. In today’s Los Angeles Times I have an oped drawing attention to the dangers of a stalling or collapse of the CPA, prompted by the October 11 SPLM pullout from the Government of National Unity.