World Food Program warehouse in Malual Kon, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, March 2009

Without context, the article is no more than another record of ‘tribal’ violence in an African country already mired by war. Without prior knowledge of the situation in Southern Sudan—and the Canadian media provides very little—the details are meaningless. Actually, Southern Sudan is in a post-war renaissance that may lead to a lasting peace, self-determination and independence; if, and only if, they can hold on to the four-year-old peace that Le Devoir describes as “already fragile.”

It’s important that news about Southern Sudan gets reported because newsworthy stories in Sudan are not just related to Darfur or to the International Criminal Court indictment of Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, which deserve media attention for the international condemnation and reduction of human rights abuses that can come from exposure. But the situation in Southern Sudan is also in need of media scrutiny to support democratization and to help maintain a fragile peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war between the government of Sudan and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

Sudan’s second civil war since its 1956 independence from British colonialism, lasted 21 years and officially ended on January 9, 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in neighbouring Nairobi, Kenya. The CPA set up a power-sharing structure between the central government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement with the creation of a coalition Government of National Unity for all of Sudan and the Government of Southern Sudan; both with new interim constitutions. The agreement allows for the transformation of the Southern rebel forces into a regular army for semi-autonomous Southern Sudan with Joint Integrated Units of both armies in specific border areas. It prescribes oil revenue-sharing protocols and the establishment of a border between the north and south of Sudan, which will transect oil-producing areas.

An interim period of six years is established to implement the peace agreement, after which the South can hold a referendum to decide to remain within Sudan or to opt for complete independence. This is tentatively scheduled for 2011.

Approximately two million people were killed during the war and about four million were displaced from their homes to other regions of Sudan and nearly one million refugees fled to neighbouring countries. Since its independence 53 years ago, Sudan has been at peace for only 15 of those years (1972-1983: Addis Ababa Agreement, and since the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement). Despite these statistics, almost no editorial space in Canadian media is given to the current situation in Southern Sudan.

Media attention of the region was particularly abundant during the 1988 famine when more than 250,000 people starved to death. But since the signing of the peace deal, the media has focused more on the conflict in Darfur than the tenuous peace in the South. The negotiations of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with former southern rebels may have added to the current civil war in Darfur, whose own rebels wanted to be included in peace negotiations but were kept from it.

The entrance of the UNMIS compound in Abyei, April 2009

Sudan presently hosts UNMIS, the largest United Nations mission in the world (not including the UN African Union Mission in Darfur) with a mandate of “supporting the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement… [and] facilitating the voluntary return of refugees and displaced persons.”

Why is the movement of refugees and displaced people more newsworthy when they flee war and persecution than when they return to the homelands they were previously forced to flee? The story of returnees to the south is a mirror into the future for Darfur refugees whose current situation is a glimpse into the past for the Southern Sudanese still struggling with their new peacetime conditions.

The civil war now raging in Darfur has displaced more than 2.25 million people since 2003*, while more than 2.24 million Southern Sudanese have returned to their homeland since 2005*. Both are impressive migrations of people that require an important amount of support from the United Nations and other NGOs to help them resettle. Donor countries like Canada, which provides $66.8 million in humanitarian aid to Sudan*, have an influence in Sudan’s future and also need journalistic scrutiny.

Recently settled homes in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, March 2009

Those that return to their homeland in the south believe that the peace deal will endure and are eager to help rebuild the country, while many are still unwilling to return for fear of the re-emergence of war. Those that do return, discover that—in many areas—living conditions in the war-ravaged south are more difficult than the areas where they are returning from: lack of sufficient drinking water, no schools, nor clinics and a difficult means for livelihood generation. Most arrive in their homeland after more than a decade of absence with little more than a few belongings. NGOs provide some with a tarp to set up a temporary shelter, blankets, water containers, cooking utensils and other non-food items, while the World Food Program provides food subsidies.

Being a refugee from war and a returnee to peace—both in Sudan—look all too similar and deserve equal attention. Media attention about Darfur needs to continue to help end the war there and it needs to begin about Southern Sudan to help it cling to its tenuous peace.

In the offices of Sudan Radio Service in Nairobi, Kenya. (February 2009)

While in Nairobi, I made contact with Southern Sudan as it expresses itself in exile, taking refuge from the past while building for the future. One of the first visits was to the offices of the Sudan Radio Service (SRS). This organisation is Southern Sudan’s first independent broadcast provider of news and information about Southern Sudan. It is broadcast on various FM and shortwave signals. Their first broadcast was made on July 30, 2003, 1 1/2 years before the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Khartoum-based Government of Sudan and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). SRS broadcasts in English, Arabic and eight Sudanese ethnic languages, and focuses exclusively on Issues and events in Sudan.

I met with John Tanza, the radio station’s Deputy Chief of Party (a title that reflects the primary funder of SRS: USAID). We discussed possible collaborations between me and SRS correspondents based in Southern Sudan. We decided that I should meet with SRS journalists that work from areas I visit to collaborate on stories of common interest.

Dan Eiffe in his Sudan Mirror office in Nairobi, Kenya. (February 2009)

In fact, we have planned that I hook up with Martin Siba, the SRS Wau Bureau Producer. I will be going to Wau after Juba on Wednesday, March 4 for a few days before continuing onward to Aweil, Warrap and Abyei.

Another place I went to visit are the Sudan Mirror. The paper’s publisher and founder, Dan Eiffe (photo) invited me into his office and told me stories of when he was a young Irish priest in South Africa and later in Southern Sudan. He told me that in June 1998 he stood in the US Congress and said to the congressmen and women during his testimony, “Southern Sudan is apartheid at its worst. Apartheid is a tea party in comparison to what happens in Southern Sudan.” Below is an audio interview I did with Dan Eiffe in February 2009.

Outside the modest grounds of Sud Academy in Nairobi, Kenya (February 2009)

Southern Sudanese refugees left Sudan during the civil war in numbers of about one million. This does not include the internally displaced people (IDPs) that rang from 4.5 to 5 million people. Many refugees ended up in Kenya and among these are the students of Sud Academy, a primary / secondary school based in a poor neighbourhood of Nairobi.

Partial funding for Sud Academy comes from Canadian Aid for South Sudan (CASS), through which I learnt of the school and who gave me contact with, Kellee Jacobs a Canadian volunteer who bfought me to the school. She wrote The Right to Education – Sud Academy’s Case Study. I’ve posted more photos from the school here.

On February 16, I catch a KLM flight to Nairobi, Kenya. Fifteen hours of flying with a three-hour stopover in Amsterdam to get a scent of Europe before heading for Sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. Very exciting! Now I have an itinerary to plan out, a budget to establish, a what-to-bring list to determine, people to contact…

This all started with the desire to better understand what happens to a place once 21 years of civil war slips into the past with the signing of a peace agreement. In Sudan that translates with the January 9, 2005 signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the ruling government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). I introduce this in a previous post.

So from Nairobi Airport, I will take a cab the Miti Mingi bed & breakfast in in the Muthangari neighbourhood of the city. I chose this place because it was referred by a friend of a friend’s friend. And because it is in the same par of town as the Sudan Radio Service (SRS), an “independant media dedicated to peace and development in Sudan” that I will be collaborating with in Nairobi, where it is based, and in Juba where it has journalist correspondents. It is also near the offices of Africa 24 Media, whose directors I will meet with to discuss their work in the African media landscape. As a Africa neophyte, starving for information about the continent mostly abandonned by North American media, A24 covers interesting stories I should have already known about but hadn’t. There may be place for collaboration.

(source: Sud Academy 2008)

While in Nairobi, I will also be visiting Sud Academy, a school established to provide a basic education for the child refugees from Southern Sudan who found themselves in Nairobi after fleeing the civil war. I’ve been in conversation with Jane Roy, who, with her husband—and Canadian Member of Parliament— Glen Pearson, started Canadian Aid for Southern Sudan (CASS). I will be interviewing Jane Roy before I leave about CASS’ recent trip to Southern Sudan in January 2009. CASS provides funding to Sud Academy and have recently returned from their anual January visit there. I will be meeting up with Kellee Jacobs, a CASS volunteer at the school. She is keeping a blog, The World as a Stage, about her experiences there.

After about ten days in Nairobi, I fly to Juba, where the journey continues. While in Southern Sudan, I will visit and write about several United Nations managed projects in the region. I have a contract with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to write “Stories from the Field” about these projects. In Juba, I expect to visit UNICEF’s Mine and Unexploded Ordances Risk Education project. I will also meet with SRS journalists, and other media outlets to gain a better understanding in the role the media plays in promoting and maintaining the tenuous peace in Southern Sudan as mandated in the CPA.

I will also be providing radio reports on a weekly basis on CKUT 90.3fm’s weekly Amandla. The pieces may be replayed on the station’s daily Morning After shows (7h00-9h00) and on Vancouver’s Co-op Radio . short video peices will be produced for the National Film Board of Canada’s CitizenShift web portal in the dossier: A Tenuous Peace. I will also write a couple of articles in The Dominion magazine. So stay tuned for lots of mobile journalism in the next three months.

From Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, I expect to fly north to visit another UNICEF project in Abyei, one of the transitional areas just north the border between Southern Sudan and the rest of the country. The project provides support to basic education in the three transitional areas: Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile states. Via email, we are establishing the itinerary and schedule to get to these project areas. If all goes well, I expect to then go to Aweil in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State, where the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) runs the Basic Infrastructure and Livelihood Support to Highly Impacted Communities of Return in the area. I am also planning on visiting a World Vision Tonj North Emergency Response and Returnee Assistance Project a bit further south in Warrap State.

So much to do. So little time: ten weeks in all. Come along for the ride.