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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online
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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