Sudan Human Rights Monitor Issue 14

(October-November 2011) The relationship between the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) has grown increasingly tenuous following the secession of South Sudan on 9 July 2011. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) partners have failed to resolve a number of outstanding post-referendum issues including the status of Abyei, the conduct of popular consultations in Blue Nile and South Kordofan, citizenship, border demarcation, responsibility for the national debt, and an oil management arrangement. The fragile relationship has deteriorated in recent months by ongoing conflict in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, accusations that each side is supporting rebellion in each other’s territory, and now ground and aerial attacks by Sudan on the territory of South Sudan.

Though both countries can ill afford the costs of renewed conflict, bombings of disputed border areas by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and recent clashes in the contested Jau area led South Sudan’s Defense Minister Nhial Deng Nhial to declare that the two countries were “on the brink” of war on 9 December. Mistrust and heightened rhetoric have prevented the two states from reaching agreements in post-referendum arrangement negotiations and impeded the creation of the ‘mutually beneficial relationship’ necessary for ‘two viable states’ agreed to in the November 2010 Framework Agreement on post-referendum arrangements.

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