Andrew Blum

As South Sudan celebrates the first anniversary of its independence, USIP offers a range of resources for examining the new country's first year and for beginning to discuss its trajectory in the coming years.

It is well known that key stakeholders in the peacebuilding field face significant challenges in monitoring and evaluating their initiatives. Increased pressure to demonstrate effectiveness, constrained budgets, and rising standards of what counts as credible evidence all must be managed. But it is also the case that organizations are identifying creative ways to address these challenges.

In Port Harcourt, Nigeria's oil capital and third-largest city, up to 480,000 people living in the waterfront areas of the city face the threat of demolition from the Rivers State government. One third of the city, and 79% of Nigeria's urban population, lives in what the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) defines as “slum conditions.” Mass demolitions, even the threat of mass demolition, poses the possibility of sparking widespread conflict in a country that provides almost 10% of US oil imports.

News reports are full of reports of violence in South Kordofan, but peace still exists in many places. Despite escalating violence, communities historically involved in the conflict are rejecting violence.

In May 2010, the Alliance for Peacebuilding in collaboration with the United States Institute of Peace launched the Peacebuilding Evaluation Project. The goal of the project was to foster collaboration among funders, implementers, and policymakers to improve evaluation practice in the peacebuilding field. This report is inspired by the deep and far-ranging conversations that took place at the meetings.

As the result of the historic referendum in January 2011, South Sudan is scheduled to become the world's newest independent nation on July 9, 2011. The University of Juba is South Sudan's flagship institution of higher education. During the war years in Sudan, when Juba was a garrison town, the University was located in Khartoum. It is now midway through the long process of relocating back to Juba.

In January the Basque separatist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), announced a “permanent, general and internationally verifiable ceasefire”. On February 7, leaders of Batasuna, a political party that served as ETA’s surrogate and has been banned since 2003, presented the statutes of a new party in a bid to re-enter the democratic game and pursue the goal of independence by solely political means.  With the support of USIP, Teresa Whitfield, of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, is investigating the reasons for ETA’s long duration and the factors that are contributing to its end.

The referendum in Sudan took place from January 9-15, 2011, to decide on whether the Southern region should remain a part of Sudan or be independent. The referendum is one of the consequences of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Khartoum central government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M).