PrintBuilding Local Conflict Management Capacity in the “Three Areas”
Participating Organizations
The Institute for the Development of Civil Society (IDCS)
The Badya Centre for Integrated Development
Project Chairs
Senior Program Officer Jacqueline Wilson
In the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in January of 2005, the "Three Areas" of Sudan --Abyei, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile-- were set aside for special treatment. For this reason, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile were granted "popular consultation" processes by the CPA in which their citizens will have an opportunity to renegotiate their relationship with the central government in Khartoum. The citizens of Abyei will have a referendum to determine whether it will become part of northern Sudan or part of an independent southern Sudan should the south declare its independence in January 2011.
At a more local level, the Three Areas and the southern states that border them have been the scene of not only intense fighting and significant displacements during the war, but they have also experienced tremendous tension related to issues like grazing corridor conflicts, proliferation of arms, and lack of development. This complex cocktail of conflict drivers is exacerbated by a lack of political trust between many of the primary actors and a difficult environment for dialogue and conflict resolution.
USIP's work in the Three Areas of Sudan has focused on alleviating the suffering conflict generates by building the capacity of local community actors to resolve their conflicts more effectively through:
1) Creating more sustainable peace agreements
2) Generating civil discourse about issues facing the Three Areas, and
3) Working together with government and international actors to address root causes of conflict in ways that stop the cycle of revenge and lead to sustainable peace.
Workshops conducted by the Institute's Education and Training Center for International Programs have focused on bringing together multiple actors, including pastoralist groups, farmers union representatives, local and U.N. security forces, and local non-governmental organization representatives to analyze and create action plans for how to resolve local grazing corridor conflicts. We have also conducted workshops on customary law with traditional leaders that focused on traditional mechanisms for resolving conflict . A workshop in 2007 brought together traditional, political and civil society leaders from Abyei, S. Kordofan and Blue Nile to provide skills training in conflict resolution techniques and to allow these leaders the opportunity to understand shared concerns and potential collaborative solutions.