13 African civil society organisations call for strong IGAD response to uprising in Sudan

Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda IGAD Secretariat

IGAD Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism

13 African civil society organisations call for strong IGAD response to uprising in Sudan

1 March 2019

Your Excellencies,

We, the undersigned African civil society organisations, write to express our concern about the deteriorating situation in Sudan. Nationwide peaceful protests against 30 years of oppression and the present day economic crisis have been met with government-sponsored violence and a failure to engage substantively with any of the protests and demands of the protesters. In a worrying escalation this week, President Bashir declared a year-long state of emergency, dissolved both the federal and regional governments, and appointed members of the military and security forces to regional governorships. These actions suggest that the authorities are preparing the groundwork for greater repression and impunity: as protests continued this week, new arrests of political figures and journalists who criticised the emergency declaration only underline this concern. Yet despite all this, Sudanese civilians and activists continue to call for democracy, good governance and human rights, values which IGAD has committed to promote.

The government has attempted to violently suppress the uprising. According to civil society reports, thousands of citizens have been detained, more than 50 people have been killed and hundreds injured as a result of use of excessive force. These numbers mask the real human cost of the violence. Members of professional associations have been killed; among them medical doctors, a teacher, students and elders (more detail has been provided in the background below). The African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies and the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) have documented female activists being arrested and subjected to verbal abuse and body searches so invasive as to constitute sexual assault. Many detainees have been held incommunicado for long periods.

Read the full letter here Open-Letter to the IGAD