As I follow events in Southern Sudan and add articles to my headlines timeline, people continually ask me basic questions about Sudan. Below I’ve included a few videos that have recently been posted online. They should provide a descent background for those wanting to learn more as Southern Sudanese are set to what is generally believed to choose to create Africa’s newest independent country.

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Sudan: History of a Broken Land

As the people of southern Sudan prepare to vote in a referendum that may see them secede from the North, Al Jazeera maps the turbulent history of a country on the verge of a momentous decision.

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Crossroads Sudan: Sudan’s path to development

Al Jazeera looks at the economic challenges Sudan will be facing after a possible secession of the South.

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Sudan Referendum

On Sunday, Southern Sudan will begin a week-long referendum on whether to break off from Sudan and form a new independent state. The vote is being held under the 2005 peace agreement that ended a nearly four-decade civil war between the North and South that killed some 2.5 million Sudanese. The people of South Sudan are widely expected to approve secession, and the vote has stoked fears of renewed violence in Africa’s largest nation. by Democracy Now

Census and Voter Registration

A Juba resident makes her registration for the Natonal Elections in April 2010, by Bonifacio Taban.

There are prerequisites to conducting a democratic election that include a census of the population to determine who can vote and in which electoral constituency. The Sudan census has been contested by the SPLM and analysed by others.

Citizens are required to add themselves to the voter list during the voter registration process, followed by a verification of the voter list after its publication. The Carter Center provided observers to provide an impartial assessment of the process. Registration of political party lists with their representatives ended yesterday after a seven-day extension.Â

Political Campaigning

Once the politicians place themselves inside the arena of an election, democratic principles require than they are able to voice their positions in an election campaign. This is when they can criticize current government practices and provide an alternative approaches to governence that will make the electorate choose them on a ballot. In Sudan, elections campaigning begins on February 13 and ends on April 9, two days before voting begins.

The Sudan Electionnaire is an English/Arabic quiz that will compare your view on 30 debated issues with the positions of the 16 main parties for the upcoming elections. Once the set of questions are completed a ranking shows how your answers match party programmes. A very interesting tool that was released by The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Sudan, the University of Khartoum Institute of Peace Research with funding from the UK Department for International Development.

Media Coverage

Thousands of wind-up and solar-powered blue radios distributed by NDI in Sudan are bringing a dialogue about national issues to isolated communities. (courtesy: National Democratic Institute)

Even before campaigning starts, the media’s role in election coverage is crucial. Radio, television, print, online media and ‘under-the-village-tree’ journalists act as messengers between the voters and those seeking votes. Journalists provide analysis and perspective to the public debate and hold politicians accountable to their proposed platforms and promises as the campaign progresses. They also provide an amplified mouthpeice to citizens wishing to express their opinions to the politicians and other citizens. Sudan Votes, another website affiliated with Sudan Electionnaire, has election reporting resources including a media code of conduct, a Reuters Reporter’s Guide to Election Coverage (.pdf), election broadcast guidelines, and media election process reference material.

Voter Education

Sudan has not held elections in 24 years and a civil war raged in the country for most of those years, so the election process is not well known by the Sudanese. With literacy rates among the lowest in the world (see chart below), particualrly in poorly developed Southern Sudan and Darfur, voter education is a significant challenge if the April elections are to be fair and democratic. The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) prepared a Sudan Civic and Voter Education Baseline Study (.pdf) in 2008 with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency.

Electoral System

Typical elections might require the selection of one, two or three representatives. (view a clip, below, of the first presidential election in Afghanistan,  in 2004) In Southern Sudan, each electorate will have twelve (12) representatives to choose from for three levels of government.

Three votes will be cast to select 1) the President of the Republic of Sudan, 2) the President of the Government of Southern Sudan, and 3) the respective State Governor.

North versus South Sudan Statistics (courtesy: Oxfam, UN)

Southern Sudanese will have three votes to cast for each of the following three legislatures: 1) the National Assembly in Khartoum, 2) the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly in Juba, and 3) the State Legislative Assembly in their respective State. Each of the three legislature votes is divided into three components: 1) 60% of the members are elected to represent geographical constituencies at their respective levels, 2) 25% of the seats are to be filled by women members elected by proportional representation from party lists at state level, and 3) 15% of the members are elected by proportional representation also from party lists at the state level.

Considering the above literacy and education rates in Southern Sudan, it will take considerable effort to educate the average electorate about the details of such a complex ballot system.

Ballot Papers

Drafting ballot papers that will allow illiterate citizens to make their selection is a design challenge of mammoth proportions. There are at least sixteen political parties vying for votes in Sudan. Many of the parties are represented on the twelve seperate ballots in the South. Each ballot will have to distinguish each representative from the other, and a ballot will need to quickly depict which seat in which legislative assembly are the representatives seeking election. They elaborate electoral system will all have to be represented visually and comprehensively in a complex election that can confuse experienced literate voters.

Polling Stations

The logistical demands of establishing up to 30,000 polling stations, printing approximately 220 million ballot papers representing the various constituencies, then distributing them—with the ballot boxes and other material—to each of the polling locations is daunting in itself. It is particularly challenging in a country the size of Sudan where lack of basic infrastructure, community remoteness and insecurity can interfere with the most coordinated of efforts.

Sudan’s April 2010 elections may be the most complex elections ever organized. Anywhere. Considering that a self-determination referendum is expected in 2011, one wonders if it would have been more realistic and appropriate to hold a simpler election process. Perhaps it would have been sufficient to elect only the three executive seats: President of the Republic of Sudan, President of the Government of Southern Sudan and Governor of each state. The simplification could have left constituent representative elections for a post-referendum Sudan, which most observers agree will result in a yes vote for independence of the South from the rest of Sudan.

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Watch a video clip by Dominique Morissette of Afghanistan’s first presidential elections held on November 9, 2004. The video is best viewed in full-screen mode.

Sudanese children in Juba promote voter registration by handing out posters (Peter Martel, IRIN)

Although the registration in the south began slowly, according to UNDP staff working with the National Election Commission (NEC), it quickly gained momentum in Southern Sudan. The SPLM-controlled region ended voter registration with a higher than average registration rate of around 86%. Today is the last day of the exhibition and objection process whereby a review of the registry is possible. The registration’s final result will be released by the NEC tomorrow.

This high rate of registration in the south may be due to a political pro-registration campaign from the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) which claims that data from the 2008 census underestimates the number of Southerners. The difference may also reflect a high number of people that returned to South since the census. What is interesting is the high turnout in northern states of Southern Sudan.

Mawien Kuc, National Election Commission Chairperson for Northern Bahr el Ghazal (a Southern Sudan state that borders northern Sudan) told the Sudan Tribune , “We will have over one million people registered and ready to take part in the next national election scheduled to take place in April 2010.” Mawien Kuc said, “I am telling you that we really committed our resources for proper mobilization of our people during registration.”

Sudan finances the majority of the registration process while 43% comes from donors.

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SOUTHERN SUDAN ELECTION PREPARATIONS (UNMIS)

National Elections Commission voter registry poster

[Montréal, Québec, Canada -6°C] today is the beginning of the seven-day display of Sudan’s Voter’s Registry. It is a time for people to confirm that their names are on the registry. Not much information about registration results is available nor of the numbers of people who have registered nor percentages of registrants versus eligible voters. This is a time when confusion may emerge while unregistered people check the list and realize that they are not on it and not be able to vote in next year’s April elections.



The National Election Commission (NEC) and United Nations (UN) kicked off the largest ever registration of voters in Sudan ahead of April elections, one year later than the what the CPA had proposed. Over 5,000 registration personnel throughout all of Sudan will be registering voters in over 700 election constituencies.

voter registration educational poster

Sudan is Africa’s largest country, much of it being without existing infrastructure. The remoteness of the vast region is the biggest ever challenge in reaching out to potential voters. The semi-autonomous Southern Sudan is the geographic equivalent to the area of France.

Static Registration Centres are located in central locations with higher populations. They are supported by Mobile Teams that travel to remote areas of the South to register voters under the village tree and report back to the Static Centres. In a country where hardly anyone carries any identification papers, identification of potential voters can be difficult. According to NEC’s Election Law, an individual’s identity may be confirmed by three fellow villagers.

At the end of the process, registered voters will obtain a laminated slip of paper each with its its unique serial number. Proof of registration will help facilitate the work at the April 2010 elections polling stations. Only registered voters will be allowed to participate in the process of selecting government representatives of the Sudan in next year’s elections.

Logistical Challenges

Logistical challenges are enormous. Nearly 120,000 kgs of materials—including registration kits, forms and training supplies—are sent to initiate the November 1, 2009 registration period to locations identified by the National Elections Commission (NEC). The difficult operation needs all means of possible transport, including airplanes, helicopters, trucks, boats, motorbikes and pedestrian porters. Registration is particularly demanding but it is just an important warm-up for the challenges ahead with the April elections.

It is estimated that Sudan’s multi-level elections will require hundreds of millions of paper ballots, which are first printed then delivered to remote corners of a country the size of Western Europe. Each constituency requires three different ballot papers: one for political parties, another for the election of the guaranteed women representation and a third for each geographic constituency. For the entire country, the electoral process requires printing over 1200 different ballot papers for the election of all the legislative bodies. What renders this extremely difficult for providing each polling station with the material it needs to hold credible elections is the delivery of the appropriate ballots to each of the voting centers, and doing this on time.

This is considered our largest ever logistical operation. A voter education campaign, a voter registration process have just begun in a huge country with a complex political context. The April 2010 Sudan elections are first elections in 24 years, and four years after the end of a 21-year civil war.
Even without considering the complex and volatile political setting within which the Sudan elections are being held, the logistical challenges alone are collosal. Whether or not the challenges are to be met has yet to be seen.
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Maciej Nawrot works in Southern Sudan for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a logistician in support to elections and democratic processes. He will be writing regular posts about the logistical challenges of organizing the April 2010 elections in Southern Sudan.

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UPDATE: the Sudan voter registration has been extended one week to end on December 7 instead of November 30  and the elections have been delayed by one week to begin on April 11 instead of April 5, 2010.