The destructive armed conflict in Darfur continues unabated despite regional and international efforts to put an end to it. "At present, no negotiated political resolution of the conflict is in sight. This happens despite the political negotiations for a peaceful settlement of the conflict under the banner of the InterSudanese Peace Talks on Darfur, which are currently taking place in the Nigerian capital, Abuja," says the Darfur Relief and Documentation Centre.
The Darfur Peace Process a Hollow Exercise
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The destructive armed conflict in Darfur continues unabated despite regional and international efforts to put an end to it. At present, no negotiated political resolution of the conflict is in sight. This happens despite the political negotiations for a peaceful settlement of the conflict under the banner of the InterSudanese Peace Talks on Darfur, which are currently taking place in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. For the third consecutive month representatives of the government of Sudan and the main Darfur insurgent groups i.e. the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) are meeting at the seventh round of talks to reach a negotiated political agreement that puts an end to the armed conflict in the region. The ongoing process is substantially flawed and fruitless. The previous six rounds of political negotiations that started in Addis Ababa in July 2004 under the auspices of the African Union (AU) have made very limited progress on some minor issues. The adoption of the Declaration of Principles on the Resolution of the Sudanese Conflict in Darfur in July 2005 is yet to be followed by a real break through in its implementation. By all accounts the progress made at the negotiations is marginal and disproportionate with the extent and magnitude of the humanitarian crisis in the region and its devastating effects on millions of civilians who are being held hostage for political bargaining. The poor results of the ongoing process should be blamed on the lack of political will on the part of the conflicting parties as well as the failure of the regional and international community to act decisively for a resolution of the conflict and to enforce the existing political arrangements. A case in point is that the Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement reached in N