EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Warring parties and international aid providers in Sudan
have an historic opportunity to bring to an end what is perhaps the most
extreme and long-running example in the world of using access to humanitarian
aid as an instrument of war. A mid-December meeting between the UN and Sudan’s
warring parties – the Technical Committee for Humanitarian Assistance (TCHA) –
provides an unparalleled vehicle to build on recent short-term agreements and
to once and for all remove the institutional barriers to unimpeded access for
humanitarian agencies. Such an opportunity may not arise again, so it is
imperative that mediators, the UN Security Council, and interested governments
provide concentrated and immediate support for this objective.
Resolving this issue will have more than just humanitarian
significance. Sudan
is presently poised between making peace and intensifying war. The next months
are a crucial period for the peace initiative being managed by the regional
body IGAD (Inter-governmental Authority on Development), supported on-site by
four official observers (Italy, Norway, UK and U.S.), and backed by governments
in the IGAD Partners Forum such as Switzerland, Canada and the Netherlands. This
process offers by far the best hope yet for an end to the country’s devastating
nineteen-year civil conflict. Manipulation of humanitarian assistance has been
throughout the conflict an integral part of the strategies of both warring
parties – but especially the government, relying on its sovereign right to deny
access to its territory. To end permanently restrictions on access to
humanitarian aid would provide a major additional foundation for further
efforts by the mediators to broker a comprehensive peace.
The months that followed the provisional protocol on
important elements of a settlement signed at Machakos,
Kenya in July 2002 saw
heavy fighting on multiple fronts. On 15 October, however, Khartoum
and the SPLA insurgents signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) providing
for the resumption of negotiations (after a six-week suspension that had been caused
by a government walk-out), cessation of hostilities through the end of
December, and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid during that same period. On 26 October, the parties signed
with the UN (under whose wing the main humanitarian operation is carried out) a
further technical agreement allowing unrestricted access for humanitarian
agencies for the months of November and December. The lead IGAD negotiator,
Kenyan General Lazaro Sumbeiywo, expects to achieve an extension of the MOU –
both the cessation of hostilities and the removal of access restrictions –
until 31 March 2003. This
is a crucial building block for continued progress, understandably slow given
the complexity of the issues, in the peace process itself.
The pledge to permit unimpeded access for humanitarian
assistance included in the 15 October MOU and the more detailed implementation
agreement concluded on 26 October is well timed. The humanitarian situation in Sudan’s
many war-torn areas deteriorated badly in recent months, as civilians continued
to suffer the brunt in particular of Khartoum’s
management of access in furtherance of its strategic aims. The agreement will
help reverse the damage done over the past months, but only if the necessary
resources are mobilised to respond to the newly accessible locations.
However, there is every reason to be sceptical that the new
humanitarian agreement will either produce a lasting improvement in accessing
needy populations or contribute positively to the crucial negotiations in
Machakos. The parties have reached and broken such agreements a number of times
in the past, dating back to the original tripartite arrangement that created
Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) under the UN umbrella in 1989. Each time, the
international community has failed to apply corrective pressure. It is vital to
avoid such a mistake this time, both because many lives are immediately at
stake and because allowing the parties to slip away from this written
commitment would create an atmosphere of cynicism and business as usual at
Machakos unlikely to lead to a lasting peace agreement. A major effort is
needed at the TCHA meeting next month to end the parties’ veto power over when
and where aid is delivered.
More medium term strategies which will reduce the
obstruction of aid over time would be to strengthen the capacity of Sudanese
organisations and non-OLS agencies to be prepared to assume greater
responsibilities, and to enhance the network of roads to expand ground
deliveries of aid throughout the South. It is also appropriate to begin to
explore the difficult issues that the international community would face if war
resumed in its full ferocity early in 2003 and there was need to threaten or
use military force to get life-saving aid into the country.
The basic message of this report is that it is time for the
international community to take a strong, coordinated stand to institutionalise
the concept of unimpeded humanitarian access. Whether the 26 October agreement
for blanket access is purely tactical or represents a shift toward prioritising
humanitarian concerns, this opening has to be seized and pushed until this
temporary exception becomes the rule. These next few weeks leading up to the
TCHA meeting will truly be a test of international resolve in support of life-saving
humanitarian access. The dry season will return with a temptation to utilise
tried and true tactics for manipulating aid, particularly if fighting resumes. The
use of starvation as a central war tactic through the obstruction of aid access
should no longer be greeted by international acquiescence.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the government of Sudan and the SPLA:
1. Implement fully the 26 October agreement and any follow-up
agreements on unimpeded humanitarian access and in so doing build the mutual
confidence that improves the climate for reaching a comprehensive peace
agreement in a timely manner.
2. Work together with the UN at the forthcoming TCHA meeting to
permanently remove all restrictions on access and geographic scope for OLS
operations.
To the IGAD mediation team, governments of the observer
countries and Sudan’s friends in North Africa and the Middle East
3. Maintain pressure on the parties to provide unimpeded
humanitarian access in order to demonstrate that agreements signed by the
parties are taken seriously and supported by the international community.
4. Urge the Sudanese government and SPLA to accept once and for
all an end to their veto power over aid access operations at the forthcoming
TCHA meeting.
5. Request the UN Security Council, in the event of
non-implementation of the agreements to support the Machakos negotiations by
considering the situation urgently and pressing the offending party or parties
to comply with their commitments and in particular to renounce any claim to be
able to veto humanitarian access within the Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS)
framework.
To international donors:
6. Provide diplomatic support to bring about a successful
result of the forthcoming TCHA meeting, and provide additional humanitarian
resources in order to respond to increased relief demands resulting from
expanded access.
7. Begin immediately to prepare and institute measures to make
humanitarian operations more effective including:
(a) improving the capacity of indigenous Sudanese organisations
to provide and manage humanitarian assistance; and
(b) expanding road construction projects that will facilitate
land access to the South;.
8. Prepare for worst case, full-scale resumption of war and
renewed efforts to deny humanitarian access by:
(a) building the capacity of non-governmental organisations to
respond to a humanitarian crisis in areas inaccessible to OLS and developing a
bureaucratic “quick release” mechanism capable of handing international efforts
and resources over to such organisations if OLS is denied access; and
(b) initiating study of the practical modalities and political,
military and logistical obstacles that would be involved in forcing access,
perhaps by declaring areas of Sudan “no fly” zones except for aircraft bringing
in humanitarian aid.
To the UN Security Council:
9. Pass a resolution in support of the forthcoming TCHA meeting
and the objective of removing all restrictions on humanitarian access.
Nairobi/Brussels, 14 November 2002