Juba, Sudan
June 22, 2009
“Humanity Check” on the Nile
This guest post is part of a series on southern Sudan by Enough policy assistant Maggie Fick, who is currently conducting research for Enough in the region.
I was recently sitting on the bank of the Nile River in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan. I am in Juba to research some of the myriad challenges facing Sudan and the international community in the next 19 months—before the “interim period” of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA, ends, and southern Sudan votes in a self-determination referendum for “unity” with or “separation” from northern Sudan. It would be untruthful to say that the situation in southern Sudan is anything other than very grim. The recent violence and death tolls in the South have surpassed the deaths this year in Darfur, and the number of risks and dangers threatening the fragile peace (fostered by the CPA when it was signed in 2005) between Sudan’s North and South are poised to multiply in the run-up to Sudan’s general elections in 2010 and the 2011 referendum to determine whether Sudan will remain as one country or split into two.
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