The 2005 Sudanese Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) brought an end to a 22-year long north-south civil war that killed 2 million people and forced another 4 million to flee their homes. Today that fragile peace is at grave risk of collapsing.

The CPA set a timeline of actions to be taken over six years, including a referendum in 2011 to decide whether the South would stay within a united Sudan or become independent.  The CPA called for demarcation of disputed boundaries, revenue-sharing of Sudan’s oil wealth, the establishment of local governments that are truly representative of local populations, institutional protections for human rights, and crucial preparations for elections at all levels, to be held next year, to establish the principle of democratic accountability. Many of those provisions remain unfulfilled.

The hearing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom will examine U.S. options for encouraging the full implementation of the peace agreement and averting a return to a bloody north-south civil war fueled in part by religious divisions.  

• Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI)
• Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ)
• Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-NJ) - see transcript
• Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA)  - see trancript
• Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) - see transcript

• Ambassador Richard Williamson, the President’s Special Envoy to Sudan
• Earl W. Gast, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for Africa, USAID

• Susan D. Page, Director for Southern and East Africa, National Democratic Institute, and former Director of the Rule of Law program, United Nations Mission to Sudan and a member of the mediation team that aided the negotiation of the CPA 
• Dr. Khataza Gondwe, Research and Advocacy Officer for Sub-Saharan Africa, Christian Solidarity Worldwide
• Kenneth Bacon, President, Refugees International

• John Prendergast, Co-Chair, ENOUGH Project against genocide
• Ted Dagne, Africa specialist, Congressional Research Servic
• Dr. Douglas Johnson, former “international expert” to the Abyei Boundaries Commission and author of The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars
• Eliseo Neuman, Director, Africa Institute, American Jewish Committee