PrintPreventing Electoral Violence in Sudan
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Building Blocks for Citizenship and a Peaceful Transition in Sudan
March 2009 | USIPeace Briefing
Sudan’s upcoming elections in 2009 raise hopes and concerns for the country’s future. According to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in 2005 between the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), Sudan is scheduled to hold national and state level elections in 2009.
Conducting Elections in Darfur: Looking ahead to Sudan's 2009 Elections
March 2009 | USIPeace Briefing
With elections planned in Sudan in 2009, the question of how residents of the Darfur region should participate points to a number of challenges that remain unanswered. Is the security situation in Darfur adequate to permit elections?
A key milestone in the implementation of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement is the organization of multiparty elections. They will be particularly significant because they will mark the first time that the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and Southern Sudan in general will have participated in the polls in a meaningful way.
Past elections have taken place in the context of an ongoing civil war, severely compromising the fairness of the polls. In this sense, the election is politically transformative, as the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) will be tested for the first time. Other special circumstances of these polls indicate that special efforts must be made to ensure that electoral conflict does not turn violent. In particular, it is not clear how or if elections will take place in Darfur, given the inconsistent manner in which the census was administered and the continuing war in the region. Furthermore, a number of incidents in the three areas (Abyei, Kordofan, and Blue Nile) and parts of the south have demonstrated the politicization of the security forces and the intertwining of local conflicts with those at the national level.
Given these conditions, working with civil society, media, academics, and other experts on understanding the triggers of electoral violence and the opportunities available for decreasing tension is an important contribution to ensuring free, fair, and peaceful elections.
Building on earlier workshops in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, the Institute’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, in partnership with the Institute’s Education and Training Center International (ETC-I) started, in January 2009, organizing a series of workshops, to address strategies for managing electoral conflict in Sudan. Using a case-study approach, the workshops use the electoral experiences of other African states to facilitate exercises in identifying triggers of electoral violence, opportunities for reducing tension, and the roles that different stakeholders can play in assuring peace political transition in Sudan. In partnering with ETC/I, the workshops incorporate training modules on conflict resolution, negotiating styles, citizenship and democracy.
To date, workshops have been held in Khartoum (January 2009), Juba (April 2009), Yei (April 2009), and Dilling (May 2009); more workshops are planned for the rest of the year. The participants were drawn from civil society, academia, the media, the security services, parliamentarians, and other stakeholder groups.