Local violence and international intervention in Sudan

Abstract

The efforts of the international community to build peace in Sudan have been frustrated by the failure to stop the violence in Darfur, continuous setbacks in the implementation of the 2005 peace agreement, and a failure to remain sufficiently engaged with processes at the root of the violence. This applies particularly to local conflicts and the ways in which they interlock with national and regional conflicts. This paper highlights the role that land issues have played both in poverty generation and in driving and sustaining protracted conflict. The challenge is to take the current complexity into account, not by perceiving local conflict dynamics as merely a manifestation of macro-political cleavages, but as being motivated by both top-down and bottom-up agendas. As Sudan is drifting towards increasing fragmentation, an approach to peace-building is required that can address multiple arenas and sources of conflict in a much more integrated way than has been the case so far.

Keywords:

• Sudan
• Darfur
• peace-building
• violence
• livelihoods
• land

Notes

The Lord's Resistance Army is a sectarian Christian militant group based in northern Uganda, but also operating in parts of Southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for its leaders.

The paper is based on research carried out within the framework of a joint research and capacity-building programme, Micro–macro issues in peace-building, carried out by the Chr Michelsen Institute (CMI), Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman and the University of Khartoum. It draws on many sources, and the author (who co-directs the programme) is grateful to Astri Suhrke and Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed for constructive comments on an earlier draft.

In addition to the CPA, the Darfur Peace Agreement was signed between the government and one of the rebel movements (SLA/Minnawi) in 2006. In the same year, the government also signed the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement with the Eastern Front.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has also warned against the serious environmental effects of current policies (UNEP 2007).