Abstract
This chapter argues that preventing mass atrocities in Africa requires addressing the root causes of conflicts. It focuses on the experience of Sudan–South Sudan, which is, in many ways, a microcosm of Africa. The chapter argues that a crisis of identity lies at the heart of conflicts in the two Sudans, reflecting their failure to manage diversity constructively. As in all such conflicts, the root cause is not the mere existence of differences, but the policy implications of those differences. Political, economic, social, and cultural practices have created a dichotomy between “in-groups”, who enjoy the full rights of citizenship, and “out-groups”, who are marginalised and denied, or perceive themselves to be denied, these rights. The chapter argues that peaceful and sustainable conflict resolution in the divided Sudan—as in other countries facing identity conflicts—must seek, therefore, to ensure inclusivity, equality, and human dignity for all, without any discrimination.
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Notes
- 1.
United Nations (UN) General Assembly, 2005 World Summit Outcome, UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, 24 October 2005, paras. 138–139.
- 2.
See International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background—Supplementary Volume to the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre [IDRC], 2001); Gareth Evans, The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008); Julia Hoffman and André Nolkaemper (eds.), Responsibility to Protect: From Principle to Practice (Amsterdam: Pallas Publications—Amsterdam University Press, 2012). See also Alex J. Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities (Cambridge: Polity, 2009); Francis M. Deng, “From ‘Sovereignty as Responsibility’ to the ‘Responsibility to Protect’”, Global Responsibility to Protect 2, no. 4 (2010), pp. 353–370; Luke Glanville, Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect: A New History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014); Alex J. Bellamy and Tim Dunne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
- 3.
The program began with a research conference in 1989, resulting in the first edited volume: Francis M. Deng and I. William Zartman (eds.), Conflict Resolution in Africa (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1991). This was to be followed by a series of regional and country-specific studies.
- 4.
Francis M. Deng, Sididiel Kimaro, Terrence Lyons, Donald Rothchild, and I. William Zartman, Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996).
- 5.
Program publications included: Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im and Francis M. Deng, Human Rights in Africa: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (1990); I. William Zartman (ed.), Governance as Conflict Management: Politics and Violence in West Africa (1991); Francis M. Deng and Larry Mineer, The Challenges of Famine Relief: Emergency Operations in Sudan (1992); Thomas Ohlsen and Stephen John Stedman, with Robert Davis, The New Is Not Yet Born: Conflict Resolution in Southern Africa (1994); Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa (1996); Francis M. Deng and Terrence Lyons, African Reckoning: A Quest for Good Governance (1998); Francis M. Deng and I. William Zartman, A Strategic Vision for Africa (2002). All published by the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.
- 6.
The IGAD Declaration of Principles, Nairobi, Kenya, 20 May 1994, http://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/SD_940520_The%20IGAD%20Declaration%20of%20principles.pdf (accessed 25 June 2017).
- 7.
Britain is used synonymously with the United Kingdom (UK) in this volume.
- 8.
See Francis M. Deng, Bound by Conflict: Dilemmas of the Two Sudans (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016); Hilde F. Johnson, South Sudan: The Untold Story (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2016).
- 9.
Abel Alier, Southern Sudan: Too Many Agreements Dishonoured, second edition (Ithaca: Exeter, 1999).
- 10.
See Francis Mading Deng, Sudan at the Brink: Self Determination and National Unity (New York: Fordham University and Institute for International Humanitarian Affairs, 2010).
- 11.
See, for example, Security Council Press Statement on Fighting in South Sudan, UN Doc. SC/12713, 10 February 2017, https://www.un.org/press/en/2017/sc12713.doc.htm (accessed 25 June 2017). See also Security Council Report, “UN Documents for South Sudan”, http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/un-documents/south-sudan (accessed 25 June 2017).
- 12.
Deng, Bound by Conflict, pp. 1–9.
- 13.
See, for example, Donald Rothchild, “An Interactive Model for State-Ethnic Relations”, in Deng and Zartman, Conflict Resolution in Africa, pp. 190–215.
- 14.
Deng, Sudan at the Brink. See Francis M. Deng, Identity, Diversity, and Constitutionalism in Africa (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008). See also Muna Ndulo, “Ethnic Diversity: A Challenge to African Democratic Governance”, in Francis M. Deng (ed.), Self-Determination and National Unity: A Challenge for Africa (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2010), pp. 11–56.
- 15.
See Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976); Joseph V. Montville (ed.), Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Washington, DC: Heath and Company, 1991); Peter Woodward, Sudan 1898–1989: The Unstable State (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990).
- 16.
See Deng, Identity, Diversity, and Constitutionalism in Africa.
- 17.
See Francis M. Deng, Tradition and Modernization: A Challenge for Law Among the Dinka of the Sudan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971).
- 18.
Francis M. Deng, “Divided Nations: The Paradox of National Protection”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 603, no. 1 (2006), pp. 217–225.
- 19.
Thomas G. Weiss and David A. Korn, Internal Displacement: Conceptualization and Its Consequences (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).
- 20.
See Ricardo Rene Laremont (ed.), Borders, Nationalism, and the African State (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005). See also Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young, Beyond State Crisis? Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspectives (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002).
- 21.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, art. 2, https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf (accessed 21 December 2016).
- 22.
David Hamburg, Preventing Genocide: Practical Steps Toward Early Detection and Effective Action (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008); David Hamburg Give Peace a Chance: Preventing Mass Violence (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2013).
- 23.
I. William Zartman, Preventing Identity Conflicts Leading to Genocide and Mass Killings (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
- 24.
My writings on the crisis of identity in Sudan include the books Dynamics of Identification: A Basis for National Integration in the Sudan (Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, 1974) and War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters, among them: “Sudan: A Nation in Turbulent Search for Itself”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Science 603, no. 1 (2006), pp. 155–162; and “Sudan’s Turbulent Road to Nationhood”, in Laremont, Borders, Nationalism, and the African State, pp. 33–85.
- 25.
See Deng, Bound by Conflict.
- 26.
Francis M. Deng, Peace and Unity in the Sudan: An African Achievement (Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, 1973).
- 27.
Matthew LeRiche and Matthew Arnold, South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence (London: Hurst, 2012), p. 1.
- 28.
Alier, Southern Sudan.
- 29.
Deng, Sudan at the Brink, p. 7. See Francis M. Deng, New Sudan in the Making? Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010).
- 30.
Deng, New Sudan in the Making?
- 31.
The United States (US) held the position that it was genocide, while the UN maintained the opposite position, though admitting that crimes had been and were being committed there that were “not less heinous than genocide”.
- 32.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “Sudan: Darfur Humanitarian Overview”, 1 April 2017, http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Darfur_Humanitarian_Overview_A3_01_Apr_2017.pdf (accessed 25 June 2017).
- 33.
Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Task Force on US Sudan Policy, US Policy to End Sudan’s War (Washington, DC, February 2001). On the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) initiative, see Francis M. Deng (ed.), Their Brothers’ Keepers: Regional Initiative for Peace in Sudan (Addis Ababa: InterAfrica Group, 1997).
- 34.
Deng, Sudan at the Brink.
- 35.
For the text of the Abyei Boundaries Commission report, see http://www.sudantribune.com/TEXT-Abyei-Boundary-Commission,11633 (accessed 25 June 2017).
- 36.
See Permanent Court of Arbitration, In the Matter of an Arbitration Before a Tribunal Constituted in Accordance with Article 5 of the Arbitration Agreement Between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army on Delimiting Abyei Area—Final Award, the Hague, the Netherlands, 22 July 2009, http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/Docs/Court%20Documents/PCA/Abyei_Final_Award_EN.pdf (accessed 25 June 2017). See also John R. Crook, “Abyei Arbitration—Final Award”, ASIL Insights 13, no. 15 (September 2009), https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/13/issue/15/abyei-arbitration-%E2%80%93-final-award (accessed 25 June 2017).
- 37.
Francis M. Deng, Frontiers of Unity: An Experiment in Afro-Arab Cooperation (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010).
- 38.
For the text of President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s speech, see http://www.gurtong.net/ECM/Editorial/tabid/124/ctl/ArticleView/mid/519/articleId/5440/President-Kiirs-Independence-Speech-In-Full.aspx (accessed 25 June 2017).
- 39.
Deng, Bound by Conflict.
- 40.
Francis Deng, “Idealism and Realism: Negotiating Sovereignty in Divided Nations”, 2010 Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture, Uppsala University, Sweden, 10 September 2010.
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Deng, F.M. (2018). Preventing Mass Atrocities in Africa: The Case of the Two Sudans. In: Karbo, T., Virk, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Peacebuilding in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62202-6_6
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