Publications

SUDAN

World Report 2001 Entry

World Report 2000 Entry

World Report 1999 Entry

World Report 1998 Entry

Famine in Sudan: The Human Rights Causes
This report charges that the Sudanese government's abusive tactics, and the predatory practicesof  rebel forces and government-sponsored tribal militia, have turned this famine  into a disasterrequiring the  largest emergency relief operation in the world in 1998,and the largest airliftoperation since the Berlin airlift. The governmentspends about one million dollars a day on the war, roughly the same  amount the international community spent on relief at the height of the famine. It also urges the warring parties to end looting and attacks on civilians, as well as thediversion of civilian relief aid. It calls on the Sudan government and rebel authorities to punishthose guilty of such abuses. And it asks that the international community actively support U.N.human rights monitors for Sudan, either inside the country or on its borders, who would betasked to promptly inform the world of human rights abuses, especially those that might lead to another  famine. Finally, the report calls on the government of Sudan to honor the promise itmade to the U.N. Secretary-General in 1998, to provide humanitarian access to rebel areas of the Nuba Mountains which have been besieged for ten years by the government.
(1932) 02/99, 224 pp.,  ISBN 1-56432-193-2, $15.00
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Sudan Global Trade Local Impact : Arms Transfers to all Sides in the Civil War in Sudan
More than one million people may have died, with millions more forcibly displaced, since today’s ongoing civil war broke out in Sudan in 1983. This conflict is spreading to other regions of the country and is linked to guerrilla wars in neighboring Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda. A steady flow of arms into the Horn of Africa for the past half century has fueled the fighting and multiplied its lethal impact on the civilian population. Human Rights Watch began its investigation of the arms trade feeding the Sudanese civil war in 1996, concentrating on types of armaments, sources of arms supply, channels of arms distribution, and the connection between arms flows and already identified human rights abusers.
(A1004)8/98, 52 pp., $7.00
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BEHIND THE RED LINE
Political Repression in Sudan
Since the National Islamic Front in Sudan took power following a military coup in 1989, it has created restrictions on daily life and political activity in an effort to maintain control. The Sudanese refer to these rules as the “red line,” and anyone who breaks the rules and crosses the line while expressing their political or civil independence is severely punished. The red line is enforced under the National Security Act, which allows security agents to arbitrarily detain anyone for up to six months without judicial oversight in secret detention centers referred to as “ghost houses,” where torture and ill-treatment are commonplace. Numerous subjects are off limits for discussion, but self-determination and slavery are especially forbidden. While Sudan has been involved in a civil war for much of the period since independence in 1956, claiming some 1.3 million civilians since 1983 as a result of targeted killings, indiscriminate fire, or starvation and disease, the conflict itself is deemed an inappropriate subject. Slavery continues today as tribal militias capture women and children as war booty in the civil war. These and other violations have created a repressive state “behind the red line.”
(1649) 5/96, 368 pp., ISBN 1-56432-164-9, $20.00/£14.95
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CHILDREN OF SUDAN
Slaves, Street Children and Child Soldiers
[OUT OF PRINT]

“IN THE NAME OF GOD”
Repression Continues in Northern Sudan
Gross human rights violations continued in Sudan 5 years after a military coup overthrew the elected civilian government in 1989 and brought to power a military regime dominated by the National Islamic Front. This report highlights human rights abuses in northern Sudan, focusing on individual testimonies to supplement the evidence of violations in the south detailed in an earlier report (see 1290). As the current regime completes its fifth year in power, all forms of political opposition remain banned legally and through systematic terror. The regime has institutionalized changes in the character of the state through extensive purges of the civil service and by dismantling any element of civil society that disagrees with its narrow vision of an Islamic state. Political power over the whole country has been entrenched in the hands of a tiny ideological elite.
(A609) 11/94, 40 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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THE LOST BOYS
Child Soldiers and Unaccompanied Boys in Southern Sudan
This report focuses on the use of child soldiers by the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army. The government’s ill treatment of children is described in another report (see 1290). The use of child soldiers bodes ill for the future of the country. Boys as young as 11 have been recruited to fight in Sudan’s civil war. No one knows the exact number of boys who have been forced to fight, but the number is in the thousands. Hundreds of these children have been killed or grievously wounded. Others have died of starvation or disease. Many have been subjected to severe beatings and all have lived in deplorable conditions. Rehabilitating and reintegrating them into their communities poses an immense task.
(A610) 11/94, 25 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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CIVILIAN DEVASTATION
Abuses by All Parties in the War in Southern Sudan
Since 1983, the civil war in southern Sudan has claimed the lives of some 1.3 million civilians as a result of targeted killings, indiscriminate fire, or starvation and disease. Both government and rebel forces are culpable as they wage war in total disregard for the welfare of civilians, violating almost every rule of war applicable in an internal armed conflict. Government forces have engaged in indiscriminate aerial bombardments, scorched earth tactics, torture, disappearance and summary executions. The two factions of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army have engaged in indiscriminate attacks, destruction of property, looting, and long-term sieges that starve civilians. The cumulative effect has been to turn Sudan’s southern region into a permanent emergency situation where war, flood, drought, and disease have torn apart ordinary survival strategies and made millions dependent in whole or in part on international assistance. International relief efforts were expanded in 1993 as the Sudanese government — alarmed not by the suffering of its own people but by the United Nations peace-keeping action in neighboring Somalia — broadened access to relief organizations for the first time. As a result of U.N. and nongovernmental organizations’ efforts, child malnutrition and disease declined through vaccination, food, and non-food distribution. Despite these and other successes in 1993, the excess mortality rate numbered 220,000 people and 700,000 others were still refugees in their own country, over 100,000 of them displaced by ongoing government attacks in the first few months of 1994 as the government took back rebel territory. Short of an end to the war, only the elevation of respect for human rights and humanitarian law by all parties will prevent the extinction of millions more.
(1290) 6/94, 296 pp., ISBN 1-56432-129-0, $15.00/£12.95
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WAR IN SOUTH SUDAN
The Civilian Toll
The eleven-year-old conflict in south Sudan continues to bring famine, pestilence and death to southerners (over one million people have died as a result of the war). This suffering is caused by gross abuses of human rights by the government and its Sudan Popular Armed Forces and the two factions of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army. The war-related abuses include indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population, looting of cattle and food and burning of villages.
(A514) 10/93, 9 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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Africa Watch Letters Protest Abuses of Human Rights
by All Parties to the Conflict in Southern Sudan
This report consists of a series of letters on human rights to the government and opposition leaders in Sudan citing concerns about gross violations by all parties to the conflict that have led to massive loss of life and famine.
(A505) 4/93, 10 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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THE COPTS
Passive Survivors Under Threat
The Sudanese Copts are a small but prominent minority who are now threatened by an Islamic fundamentalist government that seems determined to drive them out of their country. They are subjected to a wide range of discriminatory practices.
(A503) 2/93, 9 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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(A412) Violations of Academic Freedom, 11/92, 21 pp., $3.00/£1.95
(A4XX) Eradicating the Nuba, 9/92, 6 pp., $3.00/£1.95
(A408) Refugees in Their Own Country: The Forced Relocation of Squatters & Displaced People from Khartoum, 7/92, 25 pp., $3.00/£1.95
(A406) The Ghosts Remain: One Year after an Amnesty is Declared, Detention & Torture Continue Unabated, 4/92, 11 pp., $3.00/£1.95
(A315) The Secret War Against the Nuba, 12/91, 12 pp., $3.00/£1.95
(A314) Sudanese Human Rights Organizations, 11/91, 11 pp., $3.00/£1.95
(A309) New Islamic Penal Code Violates Basic Human Rights, 4/91, 15 pp., $3.00/£1.95
(A304) Inside al Bashir's Prisons, 2/91, 21 pp., $3.00/£1.95

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