From the time the Sudanese refugees began their sit in I've been following with particular attention the situation and it's unfortunate that the sit in has ended up that way, which is normally what people had to expect as in most such situations the UNHCR always asks the police to intervene.

I am a DRC national who has been living in Zimbabwe as a refugee since November 2003. Back home I was a human right activist and despite my status, I am still involved in such activities denouncing the attitude of the UNHCR staff in addressing refugee problems. I've already paid the price, which is being kidnapped by the Zimbabwe intelligence agents.

On Friday the 30th of December 2005 when the incident of Mustapha Mahmound Park occurred every one condemned the attitude of the police, which is normal, but no one talked about the responsibility of the UNHCR staff and until now no one has pointed a finger at the UNHCR which is unfair.

If I am not mistaken, the same police were protecting the protesters from the 29th of September when they began their sit in and every one praised their attitude, but I was personally disappointed when people rushed into condemning the Egyptian government only, while they made it clear that it was the UNHCR that asked them to pass into action. Not expecting such chaos is being hypocritical and unrealistic, especially since from the beginning the refugees made it clear that they were there for life and death: "We will wait here, we will die here. We have no other place to go."

Action speaks louder than words so we say. While all the human rights organizations requested an inquiry and investigation, like the government, the UNHCR also rejected the call. How is it possible that the organization that has the mandate to protect the refugees can reject a call for investigation?

Who is to stand by the fundamental right to life of some 25 million African refugees, homeless and IDPs?

Even here in Zimbabwe , out of the four protests by refugees the country has so far experienced since an influx in 1998, two have resulted in chaos and that happened after the UNHCR requested the police to disperse the protesters.

I personally believe that it's high time that human right organization put pressure to the UNHCR too.

The African leg of the World Social Forum (WSF) kicks off next week in the Malian capital, Bamako, with a host of issues on the agenda: war and militarism, global trade and debt, to name just a few. The conference website where these topics are listed makes no direct mention of AIDS, however, or the need for good governance in African states - even though these are amongst the key development issues confronting the continent today.

The World Bank's decision to suspend loans to Chad after the country said it would divert revenues from an oil project intended to alleviate poverty is a symbolic gesture that dodges meaningful action by the Bank in similar mining, oil and gas projects, watchdog groups say. Last week, the Washington-based public lender made good on threats to suspend 124 million dollars in loans to Chad, one of the world's poorest nations, after the government amended a law that controls the country's oil revenues, against the Bank's repeated advice.

They were born in southern Sudan but fled during the war. These young people are returning after years spent in refugee camps. In those camps the students say they were treated with suspicion. And they were always well aware that they were not citizens of their host nation. Mabe Bosco is twenty four years old and is anxious to feel like a Sudanese citizen for the first time in his life. Those who plan to return are not moving back under ideal conditions. The young people say they are well aware that they face enormous obstacles but they will not give up.

South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka used an Air Force plane for a private holiday in December. A spokesman said the deputy president used the plane for a trip to the United Arab Emirates estimated to have cost taxpayers about 400,000 rand ($66,000). He said she was entitled to use the plane. The opposition described the "gravy plane" incident as outrageous.

On the back of record oil prices, Africa's second largest producer, Angola, has one of the continent's fastest growing economies while its people remain among the poorest.After 27 years of civil war a peace agreement signed with UNITA rebels in 2002 is slowly beginning to translate into a better life for ordinary Angolans, who increasingly blame the government for the delay in turning the oil revenue into much-needed development.

The SACP and Cosatu have shelved damaging rifts in the tripartite alliance over the Jacob Zuma affair with calls to vote for the ANC in the municipal elections, reports Independent Online. They presented a united front at Sunday's launch of the ANC election campaign by President Thabo Mbeki in a packed Athlone Stadium. The two alliance partners had openly backed the beleaguered ANC No 2 after he was axed as Mbeki's deputy in the government.

Tanzania could start rationing power this month to cope with shortages resulting from a long drought that is causing famine and threatening east Africa's economies, officials said on Saturday (January 7). Falling water levels have cut in half the output of hydroelectric generators that power much of the east African nation, said Patrick Rutanzibwa, principal secretary with Tanzania's Ministry of Energy and Minerals.

Technology website and e-newsletter Tectonic has had a design overhaul. The brand new site is designed to make it as simple as possible to find the latest news, section pages have been beefed up, search tools improved and a news archives section added.

There is a feeling that the growing standardisation of aid policies and procedures among northern donors, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs), is not contributing to building strong local civil society organisations, enhancing local ownership, or contributing to strong partnerships.

Illegal immigrants seeking to start a new life in Europe will now find it impossible to jump the border after the Moroccan and Spanish armies erected a barbed wire between their common frontier, reports Inter Press Services (IPS).

The Executive Director is responsible for all programmes and projects of the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) including their conceptualization and implementation according to FEMNET's contractual obligations and internal policies and reporting on them. The Executive Director is responsible to the Board of Trustees and Executive Board and manages the human and financial resources at FEMNET's Regional Secretariat in Nairobi, Kenya.

Tanzania's newly elected president, Jakaya Kikwete, has pledged to invest heavily in scientific training, research and development to overcome years of neglect for the field. Kikwete told SciDev.Net on the eve of the election (13 December) that the US$600,000 research budget allocated to the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology was "a joke". He commented that the sum might only be enough to properly fund a single large research project.

The Wellcome Trust has launched a final call for proposals for their global grant scheme, Livestock for Life. Awards ranging from £20,000 to £150,000, are available. Livestock for Life aims to strengthen links between livestock keepers, practitioners, researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders working in the field of international health.

Organisers are pleased to invite all health policy makers, indigenous peoples, health institutions and workers, scientists, orthodox medical practitioners, traditional health practitioners, botanists, foundations, pharmaceutical and bio-technological companies, legal practitioners, law schools, law students and law societies, environmentalists, HIV-caregivers, people living with HIV/AIDS, and the citizens of the world to a global summit on HIV/AIDS, traditional medicine and indigenous knowledge at the Accra International Conference Centre, Republic of Ghana, on March 14-18, 2006.

Zimbabwe's Agriculture Minister Joseph Made says the Harare government is considering enacting new legislation to force the country's banks to finance black villagers resettled on land seized from whites. Speaking to ZimOnline at the weekend, Made accused commercial banks of ganging up to sabotage President Robert Mugabe's controversial land reforms by refusing to advance loans to blacks allocated land by the government.

Inspite of an assurance to Ugandans that he would leave if defeated, President Yoweri Museveni has said he will only retire if the people and his NRM party plan it properly. Addressing a campaign rally he said "you don't just tell the freedom fighter to go like you are chasing a chicken thief from the house."

Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF has recommended a purge of all staff at state-owned media who were hired by the former Information Minister, Professor Jonathan Moyo, writes Gugu Ziyaphapha in an article posted on www.journalism.co.za The recommendation was made at the just-ended party conference, where Makonde legislator Leo Mugabe also attacked Moyo for having sabotaged the public media with his policies. Zanu PF’s deputy secretary for information and publicity, Ephraim Masawi, said the party and government should clean up the structures put in place at the state media by Moyo because he was using them for his selfish ends.

Malawi’s First Lady, Ethel Mutharika, has taken The Nation Newspaper to court over a story she went on a shopping spree in Scotland while her husband was negotiating for aid to help the starving in his country, writes Samuel Makaka on www.journalism.co.za in a story published on December 22. The Nation newspaper, one of the biggest in the country, repeated claims in the Daily Record of Scotland that she was seen shopping in expensive stores in Edinburgh during an official visit.

At least 3,000 pupils failed to report back to school in Mandera District after reportedly crossing into Ethiopia and Somalia with their parents as the drought in the country rages. According to an official of the Kenya National Union of Teachers: "Most pupils will be forced to discontinue their classes as most pastoralist families continue to move with their stock out of the district.”

Constitution of Kenya Review Commission are officially winding up business and each of its 27 members will take home between KSh2 million and KSh5 million as a send-off package. The Commission ceases to exist following expiry of the Act that led to its formation. Kenyan tax payers could end up forking out a minimum of KSh54 million to the commissioners.

Painting a rosy picture of Uganda's Aids story at the expense of the bare realities only does a disservice to the country's fight against HIV/Aids, says this ananlysis in The Monitor newspaper. Admittedly, considerable progress has been made in the fight against Aids. Nonetheless, the progress should not dismiss the reservations about Uganda's so called success story in the fight against Aids.

Reports indicate that the Kenyan Government has reduced the cost of anti-retroviral drugs. A Cabinet meeting chaired by President Kibaki has approved the move to lower the cost of ARVs from KSh500 to KSh100 (just over a dollar) a month. By the end of last year about 60,000 Kenyans, out of a target of 95,000, had been put on free ARVs treatment in public hospitals, but the Cabinet said there were plans to increase the number.

Tanzania's new Cabinet begins work tomorrow amid disappointment that greeted the new President's decision to drop 14 of 26 ministers who served in the last government. As the Cabinet was being sworn-in critics inside and outside the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi pointed out that Kikwete had taken the first bold step towards scuttling a ring of powerful individuals that gravitated around his predecessor, Benjamin Mkapa.

African Shirts - (http://africanshirts.blogspot.com/2006/01/prison-works.html) is surprised that Nigeria’s prison population is nearly 4 times less that of the UK. The Nigerian Government is set to release more than half of its 40,000 inmates, which again he finds surprising.

“Call me biased against Nigeria, but I'd never have expected this to be the case. I still think of Nigeria as a country where people get arrested and subsequently disappear forever, like Houdini gone wrong. “

He also questions the suggestion implied by the prison numbers that Nigerians are more law abiding than in the UK.

“This is rubbish. Lagos is probably the most crime-ridden and unsafe place in the world, except for Baghdad (which is in a war zone, so it doesn't count). Given the amount of crime in Lagos, its prison population alone should be 40,000. I suspect that Nigeria ranks lower than the UK because the Nigerian justice system grinds slowly, if at all.”

And here lies the crunch. Nigerian prisons are less populated probably because the justice system is slow and people can bribe their way out of jail! None the less he is impressed by:

“…the move as most of the inmates appear to have been held in violation of the number one right of the imprisoned - habeas corpus. This shows that the Nigerian government is, shock horror, interested in the rights of its citizens.”

Darfur blog, The Passion of the Present - Passion of the Present (http://platform.blogs.com/passionofthepresent/2006/01/a_movement_by_w.html) reports on a movement by women in the DRC to fight the stigma associated with rape.

“These women are part of a growing movement of female community leaders who, with support from international donors, are fighting the stigma long associated with rape in northeast Congo, where a violent, ethnically driven conflict has raged for much of the past decade.”

The women are beginning to form local vigilante committees to protect and support women who have been raped and to provide them with counselling.

Ethiopian Politics - Ethiopian Politics (http://ethiopianpolitics.blogspot.com/2006/01/dictator-of-month.html) reports that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been chosen as “Dictator of the Month Dot Com” which
is an online magazine that features infamous works of “dictators, autocrats and monarchs of the world”. Dictators that have been featured on this website include: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Kim Jong Il and Mengistu Halilemariam. This blogger along with other concerned Ethiopian citizens has been in contact with “dictator of the month” website informing them of the atrocities committed by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. After reviewing all the evidence from all the major news sources they are finally convinced that Meles does indeed deserve this title.

Black Star Journal - Black Star Journal (http://blackstarjournal.blogspot.com/2006/01/38000-die-each-month-in-dr-...) comments on the astounding figure of 34,000 people dying each month in the DRC and the lack of response from the global community.

He contrasts the response to the Asian Tsunami where 283,000 people lost their lives with a million displaced, and 9/11 when 3,000 people died.

“But if I told you there was a conflict that has cost almost 15 times as many lives as the tsunami, could you name that crisis? If I told you there was a crisis that, in mortality terms, was the equivalent of three 9/11s every week for the last 7 years, would you know which one I'm talking about?”

He rightly concludes that it is all about location, location, location!

Tunisian blogger Subzeroblue - Sub Zero Blue (http://www.subzeroblue.com/archives/2006/01/biodiesel_in_tunisia.html) writes about the rising cost of fuel throughout the world. The consumer is loosing whilst the big oil companies continue to bank their profits. Although Tunisians are lucky because their oil is subsidised by the Government, this will not last forever and like the rest of the world an alternative fuel needs to be found. One suggestion is BioDiesel,
“An option that I find really accessible for a country like Tunisia, that can't afford to invest a lot of money in hydrogen-powered fuel cells for example, is BioDiesel. Biodiesel is fuel made from renewable materials such as vegetable oils or animal fats, or even recycled fryer oil. It is biodegradable and non-toxic, and has significantly fewer emissions than petroleum-based diesel when burned. It also functions in current diesel engines and reduces engine wear by as much as one half.” Bio Diesel is already available in the UK and the US and there is a website which explains how you can make it yourself. Bio Diesel (http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html)

Black Looks - Black Looks (http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks/2006/01/a_56_year_old_e.html) comments on the sentencing to five years of a British paedophile for sexually abusing young children in Ghana.

“Obviously the arrest of this despicable individual is a relief but the reality is that in Africa alone there are millions of children being abused in this way whilst the number of prosecutions is relatively small. “

African countries are full of sex tourists, Gambia, Cameroon, Kenya and South Africa to name a few. Using Gambia as an example she explains how sex tourism operates. South Africa is a major destination and distributor of children from across the world.

“Child trafficking, child prostitution and child pornography have become major money making operations for individuals, gangs and syndicates in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and other parts of the country; and around the world. Molo Songololo’s research revealed that children are trafficked across South Africa’s borders; both into and from South Africa, as well as within its border.”

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks, http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Ethiopian Finance Minister Sufyan Ahmed has said the poor in his country would suffer if aid donors carried out their plan to withhold US $375 million in budget support because of the government's recent crackdown on opposition supporters.

159 years after the first modern nation in Africa was established by freed American slaves, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf will be inaugurated as its first woman president (January 6). She will also be the continent's first female elected head of state. The challenges she will face are immense. Liberia has just emerged from 15 years of civil war, in which its people have been butchered and demoralised; there is no electricity in parts of the capital, Monrovia; water-supply systems have been almost universally destroyed, and schools looted or burned down; and hospitals and clinics exist in name only.

The Nile River, the world's longest river, travels more than 6,700 km from its farthest source at the headwaters of the Kagera Basin in Rwanda and Burundi to its delta in Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea. Today the Basin is home to an estimated 160 million people, and more than 300 million people live in the ten countries that share and depend on Nile waters. Because of its complex history, there is only limited cooperation in the development and management of the Nile, with unilateral action causing dispute, and even threatening regional security, according to the Ethiopian Reporter.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour will undertake an official mission to Uganda from 7 to 14 January 2006. The mission, the first by a High Commissioner for Human Rights, will focus on the general human rights situation in Uganda in keeping with her mandate; as well as on the protection of civilians, particularly Internally Displaced Persons; the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights; and the United Nations human rights presence in the country. In addition to Kampala, Ms. Arbour will visit Gulu in the north of the country and the Karamoja region, in northeastern Uganda. During the mission, Ms. Arbour will meet senior Government officials. She will also hold talks with state institutions and civil society organizations, including the National Human Rights Commission, as well as with traditional leaders, according to the UNHCHR.

Relegation of the trade ministry to peripheral roles in anticipation that the private sector will drive development has made Uganda fail to benefit from regional and bilateral trade associations. A statement issued recently by the trade ministry and the Uganda Programme for Trade Opportunities and Policy said Uganda is a signatory to many regional and bilateral trade agreements. Some of them include Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, World Trade Organisation, General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and European Union-Africa Caribbean and the Pacific. "However, Uganda has not benefited from them because she paid more attention to conditionalities for international loans and grants at the expense of building capacity in the trade sector," the statement said.

The United Nations (UN) has launched its International Year of Deserts and Desertification to raise global public awareness of the advancing deserts, of ways to safeguard the biological diversity of arid lands covering one-third of the planet and protecting the knowledge and traditions of the two billion people affected by the phenomenon. As reported by Ghana News Today, the Secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) stressed the importance of recognizing that in addition to the human and environmental cost of the degradation that contributes to the problem, the dry lands are the location of some of the most magnificent ecosystems of this world: the deserts.

Schools across the Central African Republic (CAR) have reopened and services have resumed in other sectors since civil servants ended their two-month strike over salary arrears on Thursday (January 5). "Our demand over unpaid salaries was partly met, as the government has accepted to pay three months' wages in 30 days," said Noel Ramadane, the vice-chairman of the country's largest trade union, the Union syndicale des travailleurs de Centrafrique. "This shows the goodwill of the CAR authorities to find a solution to our grievances."

Annastasia, 12 months old, her hair plaited with red and white ribbons to match her flowery dress, conjures the ideal image of a cute toddler, a perfect contender for a baby pageant. The only discordant note is her surroundings - four high white walls make up Annastasia's world, and she will only discover what lies beyond them in six months' time, when her grandmother fetches her to live with her four siblings. Prison Fellowship of Zimbabwe (PFZ), the local charter of an international Christian alliance for rehabilitating and assisting former inmates, estimates that over 200 children are in the country's jails with their detained mothers.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, is expanding a transit site at Musasa in northern Burundi to accommodate thousands of Rwandans seeking refuge in the country, an agency official said on Friday (January 6). Some 2,000 people have arrived in the northern provinces of Ngozi, Muyinga and Kirundo since December 2005, bringing the number of Rwandan asylum seekers in Burundi to an estimated 8,000, said Didier Bukuru, the UNHCR information officer in the capital, Bujumbura.

International Alert has been implementing a peacebuilding programme in the Great Lakes region for over 10 years, and is seeking a new Programme Manager. You will be based in Burundi, from where you will lead a team of around a dozen expatriate and local staff, implementing conflict transformation programmes in the DRC, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. We are looking for an experienced Manager from within the NGO sector, with at least five years' experience of conflict-related programming, strong at team leadership, with a strategic mindset and a proven ability to design projects and raise funds.

This paper from the Eldis web site considers approaches towards improving the predictability of aid to low income countries, with a special focus on budget support. The authors note that in order to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, the donor community is increasing aid flows while pushing for more coordination and tighter performance-based selectivity. The document warns that these factors may increase the unpredictability of aid, from current levels, which are already high enough to impose significant costs. The authors recommend that to improve predictability, donors must extend their funding horizons.

What have been the responses to the HIV and AIDS crisis by Ministries of Education worldwide? This Eldis report analyses responses to the HIV and AIDS crisis, both by Ministries of Education and civil society groups working on education, in 18 countries across Asia, Latin America and Africa. It attempts to answer the following three questions: What progress have Ministries of Education made in responding to the epidemic? How have civil society organisations working on education responded to the epidemic? How can the educational response to HIV and AIDS be strengthened and galvanised?

Governments must kick start negotiations on an international Arms Trade Treaty this year, the Control Arms Campaign said as the UN launched its first major review of small arms controls in five years. Existing arms controls are powerless to protect innocent civilians, according to three reports on the human cost of arms transfers to Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sierra Leone launched today by the Campaign. "In 2006, the world has a choice. Either it continues to ignore the massive human cost of arms proliferation or it finally acts to control the arms trade," said Barbara Stocking, Director of Oxfam. "No one but a criminal would knowingly sell a gun to a murderer, yet governments can sell weapons to regimes with a history of human rights violations or to countries where weapons will go to war criminals."

Rival political leaders from Somalia are reported to have reached an agreement to reunify the country after 15 years of factional division. The talks, taking place in Yemen, have been led by Somalia's president and the parliamentary speaker, allied to armed militias controlling the capital. Officials say President Abdullahi Yusuf has agreed in principle to move the central government to Mogadishu.

Ethiopia and Eritrea's dangerous stalemate over their disputed border, could force the United Nations to withdraw its peacekeeping mission, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said. "As a result of the restrictions imposed on UNMEE [the UN's Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea], the present position of the Mission is becoming increasingly untenable," Annan said in a report to the UN Security Council on Tuesday. "The time may be fast approaching to take difficult decisions on the future of the Mission."
Related Link:
Latest report from Crisis Group on border dispute
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3850&l=1

A group of Ethiopian opposition leaders, aid workers and journalists - facing treason, conspiracy and genocide charges have been denied bail. The High Court judge said the severity of the accusations against the group of 131 precluded their release. The group, including all the leaders of the main opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) party, are refusing to recognise the court's legitimacy.

An enormous humanitarian crisis is emerging in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga Province, with tens of thousands of people being displaced, but so far the government and the international community are doing little. "Katanga is not on the political map, which is why such a massive humanitarian crisis can go ignored," said Jason Stearns, the International Crisis Group's senior analyst on Central Africa, who is working on a report on Katanga to be released in early 2006.

Negotiations between the warring parties of Sudan's Darfur region over power-sharing arrangements are deadlocked, impeding the search for an overall peace deal to end three years of bloodshed, negotiators said on Wednesday. Two Darfur rebel movements and the Sudanese government are deep into a seventh round of peace talks in the Nigerian capital but they have had to put aside two critical power-sharing issues after weeks of detailed talks failed to achieve progress.
Related Link:
Women Boost Darfur Talks
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31537

The Coalition on Violence against Women (COVAW) engages chiefs and other local leaders to become women’s rights advocates and resources for victims. The program was formed because of the lack of women’s rights advocates for women who have been subjected to violence. Women who have been abused usually turn either to local hospitals/clinics or to their chiefs. However, none of these groups were able to adequately meet the women’s needs and the Coalition on Violence Against Women wanted to change this. Visit the website of New Tactics in Human Rights to find out more.

Human rights defenders from over 70 countries around the globe participated in a Dublin conference hosted by Front Line Defenders, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (http://www.frontlinedefenders.org), in October 2005. The three day platform saw individual human rights defenders give moving testimonies of the work they do and the hardships, challenges and risks they face daily. Pambazuka News will be publishing a series of these testimonies over the coming weeks, beginning with that of Dr. Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, who recounts the experiences of the Sudan Social Development Organization in Darfur.

“I am giving this testimony on behalf of my organization, Sudan Social Development Organization (SUDO), and myself.

What is Sudan?

The word in Arabic (Sudan) literally means the blacks. It was used in ancient history to describe the land South of Egypt. In modern history it was used as a name to describe inhabitants of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal, Chad (the French Sudan) and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Sudan in its now known political boundaries, came as a result of the territory’ sharing between the colonial powers in the 20th century.

This country is characterized by its multi-ethnic, multi-cultural multi-religious population. There are more than 600 groups living in the country. These groups when setting the boundaries were not consulted as to whether or not they wanted to live together to form one nation. They were packed in these boundaries without consultation.

That means in reality that there is no one nation called Sudanese, but a country lived in by groups with diverse races, cultures and religions.

How it is ruled?

The colonial powers adopted a governance structure which is centralized, run and controlled by Khartoum. This system was inherited by a clique of Sudanese after independence in 1956, who preserved the same social, economic and political structure.

The basic features of this structure are:

- A small section of the Sudanese people are active in exploiting the resources of the country and have control over the state apparatus and the resources of the country, and impose policies and culture that serve their greedy interests.

- The majority of the population with their ethnic, religious and cultural diversities are ruled by this minority. Their right to be masters over the wealth that they produce and to participate in the general affairs of their country and regions is denied. Also their right to express their cultures and heritage is denied.

In spite of slogans and allegations of implementing decentralization, regionalism, federation and the just redistribution of power and national wealth, the hegemony and domination of the minority has deepened much more.

On the cultural aspect, traditions, cultures, and customs of the majority of the peoples were marginalized and a racial, narrow-minded vision of the identity of the country established.

The majority of people, as a result of the continuation of this structure, experienced the suffering of poverty, ignorance, diseases, and deprivation, and faced different kinds of calamities, like war, famines and epidemics which affected to a great extent the rural areas. This led to increasing numbers of emigrants and displaced people towards cities to dwell in miserable conditions. Misery became the general feature of their life in urban and rural areas.

The following manifests the essence of this system of governance structure:

- The strict centralization avails to the government of Khartoum an absolute power to decide on all crucial local and national issues. This situation marginalizes and deprives the will of all people.

- The preservation, by the different governments, of the aspects of uneven development inherited from the colonial state is made even worse to the extent that the least developed regions were much more underdeveloped. The phenomenon of economic collapse and the decline of the standard of living is common to all the nation but has hit rural areas with great severity and damage.

- The adoption of a dangerous and incapable concept of Sudanese identity that stands on the ground of religious and ethnic superiority.

- The establishment of the religious state giving all the mentioned grievances their institutional embodiment and their most horrible expression as manifested in the existing wars and in the ethnic and religious purging and mass annihilation. The religious state also deprives people from their rights of citizenship and creates a second-class citizen, it also supports economic and social inequality and renders the unity of the country impossible.

Due to these policies, Sudan has never lived in peace since its independence. War in the south began even before the colonial troops left the country. The central government in Khartoum adopted policies of divide and rule and used local conflicts to wage war against its opponents. The regular army has always fought by proxy using tribal militias. The more people start demanding equality and justice the more brutal becomes the central government. In the south of Sudan, in a long war, 2 million people have been killed, Five million persons were displaced or took refuge. The ongoing war in the Darfur killed 300,000 persons, about 2 million persons are displaced.

Emergence of SUDO

In this environment, looking at the condition of the country and the people, some 54 Sudanese men and women gathered and formed a national NGO, under the name of the Sudan Social Development Organization, known as SUDO, to work towards the welfare of the Sudanese people.

The SUDO mission is to contribute to the creation of a general human rights movement capable of defending itself and seeking a society free from all forms of human rights violations.

SUDO considers providing and availing basic needs and services a basic human right. It adopts a rights based approach on all its interventions. SUDO finds it impossible in societies like Sudan to advocate for political rights without economic and social rights. Therefore drilling a borehole or building a clinic or school is a very good event to advocate for political and social rights. Training and advocacy programs can be conducted concurrently while providing the service.

Given the conditions of the country, being ruled by a dictatorship and controlled by security, registering an NGO with such a mission was on its own a challenge.

From the first day of its registration SUDO started to work, and adopted an approach of going directly to the grassroots community.

In this short testimony I will just give a brief about the SUDO experience in the defense of human rights in Darfur as an example.

While working in Darfur since it was formed in 2001, SUDO recognized the ongoing conflict in the region. Although very young and vulnerable SUDO started advocating about what was going on in the region. We approached diplomatic missions in the Sudan as early as 2002, telling them about abuses in the region, attacks on villages, killing of civilians, burning of houses, and the looting and destruction of property. SUDO reported the systematic trend of attacks, systematic killing of individuals and mass killings of certain tribal groups.

SUDO reports were not listened to, not because they were discredited but because the political environment was not accepting to believe what had been said. SUDO worked closely with Amnesty International to highlight the gravity of what was going on in the region, in terms of human rights abuses, but both Amnesty and SUDO were not listened to. Although we managed to get out credible reports throughout 2002 and 2003, western governments were not wanting to accept the fact that there was another war going on in the Sudan. Western governments were by that time very involved in the peace process between the so-called South and North. One of the diplomats was even telling us “Why Darfur now?” Our reply was: “It is not our choice, we have not invented it.”

Hundreds were detained arbitrary and SUDO worked closely with Amnesty International for their release. We mobilized local communities and thanks to these efforts we managed to free many who were innocent, but with severe regret many lost their lives under torture. Slowly the war started to get a political dimension. By the end of 2002, a political/armed group named itself as the Darfur Liberation Front (DLF) and later transformed to the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement SLA/M. The trend of the war has changed. Instead of militias backed by government forces attacking villagers the government army started to launch systematic attacks against civilians. SLA has launched very painful, planned attacks against government army garrisons, and the government has retaliated by using heavy bombardment, air raids against villages, and concurrently used militias to attack villages burn, loot, rape and kill.

SUDO and other international organizations started reporting what was happening to the public and the Western missions in Khartoum, but still very little response was noticed. The government reacted by putting restrictions on INGO (international NGOs) movement, confining them to the main cities in Darfur, Geneina, Fasher and Nyala. The government started to gather outlaws, free criminals from the prisons, grant them amnesty and recruit them to join it on its war campaign.

SUDO, being a national NGO, has not abided by the restriction of movement. SUDO staff and members went to all areas in Darfur, seeing the misery of the fighting and the burden inflicted upon the civilians. Hundreds, thousands of women and children were forced to leave the burned villages, their dead husbands, sons and fathers and flee bare footed for days and weeks. They were without water and food, forced into camps at the outskirts of deserted towns, and away from the eyes of the humanitarian organizations. They were without shelter and clothes and subject to the attacks of the government militias called Janjaweed. SUDO reported in one instance, in one of these collection of people, the death of a child every second day. By the end of 2003, the international community started its very slow movement, forced by the magnitude and gravity of the situation.

In its effort to highlight the Darfur cause SUDO suffered a lot. Many of its members, volunteers and staff were arrested and tortured, but in spite of that continued to work. SUDO intervened with humanitarian assistance to the people in need and managed to pull in many international organizations to come in, and give assistance. Our staff has carried the risk on their shoulders, under fire and bombardment, in Kaila, Mershing, Zalingei and many other places. They are in the front assisting people. Young men and women, risking their own lives, opening a road for international assistance. SUDO staff have faced militias and talked in very dangerous situations to the tribes who were involved in the conflict. Still to date SUDO staff is working, delivering a service to the people in need, despite the danger they face. Our staff is working in areas designated by UN security as unsafe.

Although it is an emergency, SUDO, still based on its mission, is protecting people, our field monitors, victims of rape, victims of other violations. Our protection officers are resource persons at the forefront, assisting UN agencies to deliver their duties. They are training police and other law enforcement forces, at camps and towns, in human rights, trying to ensure their abidance with international human rights conventions.

A Short Personal Testimony

I have gone through different detention experiences by the ruling regime, since they came to power in 1989. But I had also had my share with other colleagues in relation to the Darfur conflict. I was arrested three times since December 2003. The first was meant to shut my mouth on the 24th of December 2003. I was arrested from home by 8 security members with Kalashnikovs in plain clothes, at 11.00 pm. My house and my office were searched. I was interrogated for two days at security offices and then transferred to the security detention centre in the general federal prison of Sudan called Kober. After being kept in that detention center for more than 45 days, I went on hunger strike on the 8th of February. On the 10th of February I was transferred to the prosecutor of the crimes against the state and charged under 9 articles of the Sudanese penal code. Five of these charges carry the death penalty. I went on trial for about 8 months, until the case was drawn from the court by the prosecutor general, due to lack of evidence, internal and international pressure.

Again I was detained from my village with a friend on the 24th of January 2005, and kept in solitary at a ghost house called Abu Ghyreib, for two months. I went on hunger strike for 12 days, after which due to internal and international pressure I was transferred to the Prosecutor of the crimes against the state and charged with an attempt of suicide and then transferred to the hospital to be treated from the effect of the hunger strike. I lost 10 kilogrammes of my weight on the hunger strike. I was released from the hospital, without the charge being dropped. On the 8th of May, while I was due to board a plane to Dublin to receive an award from Front Line I was detained again, my passport was confiscated and I was banned from travel. I stayed 3 days at the security detention centre together with my friend and my driver, and was then transferred to the prosecutor of the crimes against the state under accusation of espionage and photographing military areas. I walked out from the prosecutor office 10 days later without being stopped.

Still I ask, whether I deserve being awarded a prize (for human rights work), when I can recall individuals, paying with their lives trying to protect their people’s rights. Do I really deserve it?”

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