South Sudan leader Salva Kiir is to seek re-election in that post rather than tackling Omar al-Bashir for the national presidency, his party says. The SPLM will instead field a northern Muslim, Yassir Arman, in the national elections due in April.

January marks the fifth anniversary of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended a bitter north-south civil war in Sudan. With important elections scheduled for April, women are debating and fighting for an expanded role in the new institutions of government.

This latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines violent conflict that has claimed several thousand lives in 2009. Inter-tribal fighting, while not a new phenomenon, has taken on a new and dangerously politicised character, with the worst violence in and around the vast, often impassable state of Jonglei.

The UN Deputy Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Southern Sudan, Lise Grande, has welcomed the first-ever rescue, by the Southern Sudan Police Service, of 28 abducted children in Pibor County, Jonglei State. The children, aged between 2 and 14 years, were released on late last month.

At least 43 people have been killed in clashes between soldiers and cattle rustlers in south Sudan. Women, children and soldiers were killed after fighters attacked a settlement in the Twic East region of Jonglei state, on Saturday, Major-General Kuol Diem Kuol, of the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), said.