Background Briefing

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The CPA and Implications for Human Rights Throughout Sudan

In the CPA, the NCP and SPLM committed all levels of government to respect Sudan’s human rights obligations.31 A key requirement for enjoyment of human rights is the thorough reform of the various security services and ensuring that they operate within the rule of law as set out in the CPA, which provides for the creation of a new National Security Act and a National Security Council.32 These vital steps, however, have not been taken.33

The continuing repressive role of the security services and military has been especially evident in Darfur, where attacks on villages resulting in civilian casualties, sexual abuse of women and girls, arrests of members of the “suspected” ethnic groups, and “ethnic cleansing” continue to occur, as amply documented by the ceasefire monitors of the African Union Ceasefire Monitoring Commission and many others.34

Civil and Political Rights

Political parties are beginning to test the limits of the commitments in the CPA for respect for human rights, and the SPLM has opened political party offices in certain northern cities. However, the political climate is nowhere near the open atmosphere that is needed for a genuine multiparty political system with respect for human rights. No progress has been made in drafting or passing the CPA-promised Political Parties Act or the National Security Act.35

During the year since the CPA was signed, security agencies continue to play the lead role in preventing opposition to the NCP from developing. They persist in attacking and dispersing demonstrators and political gatherings, monitoring and arbitrarily arresting opposition suspects, conducting searches and seizures of opposition property, intimidating journalists and editors, and a range of other activities. The political class in Sudan—which ranges from Islamists critical of the government (Ansar al-Sunna and the Popular Congress Party of Dr. Hassan al Turabi) to secular democrats (including many southern parties) to sect-based parties (the largest political parties have been the Umma and Democratic Unionist Parties) to regional parties (Union of Southern African Parties and Sudan National Party) and many others (including the Sudan Communist Party)—is capable of a high level of activity if it is not hemmed in by fear of the torture and repression used by the NCP-controlled security services since 1989 up to the present day.

Security (Internal and External Security) and military services (particularly military intelligence) have continued to play a role in suppressing other civil and political rights and perpetrating abuses. Among other places, this has been seen in Port Sudan, eastern Sudan, where they were responsible for killing more than twenty people, injuring scores and arresting more in demonstrations on January 29, 2005.36 In northern Sudan they attempted to replace locally-elected representatives through arrests, and called out the armed forces against local farmers who opposed the wholesale confiscation of land and wells for the (Chinese) construction of the Hamadab/Meroe dam in November-December 2005.37


Ending Impunity

The thorough reform of the military and security services should be underlined by prosecutions of the worst offenders—which the CPA does not specifically require. Although the CPA does not provide for a truth commission or establish a special mechanism to prosecute abuses committed during the southern war or elsewhere in Sudan, it does not prevent the government from establishing these institutions. Nor does it bar prosecutions of individuals by the existing criminal courts. The authorities should proceed with prosecutions not only of army and security forces abuses in the south during the war, but also of torture throughout the country committed by security agencies.

The National Security Act has not been drafted and the National Judicial Service Commission Act is inconsistent with the provisions of the interim national and southern constitutions in that it incorrectly provides that the president will name all the members of the judiciary, even in Southern Sudan.38



[31] The CPA states in Chapter 11 on Power Sharing that “The Republic of the Sudan, including all levels of Government throughout the country, shall comply fully with its obligations under the international human rights treaties to which it is or becomes a party. These include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Slavery Convention of 1926, as amended, and the related Supplementary Convention, the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, the International Convention Against Apartheid in Sports, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the Related Protocol, and the African Charter on Human and People's Rights. The Republic of the Sudan should endeavor to ratify other human rights treaties which it has signed.” [online] http://www.iss.co.za/AF/profiles/Sudan/Darfur/compax, Chapter II (power sharing).

[32] Confidential document, “Implementation Report,” October 22, 2005.

[33] UNMIS, “CPA Monitor,” Khartoum, January 2006.

[34] See Human Rights Watch, “Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur,” A Human Rights Watch Report, Vol. 17, No. 17 (A), December 2005, [online] http://hrw.org/reports/2005/darfur1205/.

[35] UNMIS, “CPA Monitor,” Khartoum, January 2006.

[36] Amnesty International, “Sudan: Those responsible for indiscriminate Port Sudan killings must be brought to justice,” AFR 54/014/2005, London, January 31, 2005.

[37] See International Rivers Network, “Urgent Call for a Negotiated Agreement to End the Violence in the Merowe/Hamadab Dam-Affected Areas,”November 30, 2005, [online] http://www.irn.org/programs/merowe/index.php?id=051130appeal.html.

[38] UNMIS, “CPA Monitor,” Khartoum, January 2006.


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