Niels Jacob Harbitz, HRH’s Project Manager for East Africa, has been selected to take part in an advanced course in conflict and war, humanitarian crisis and relief operation journalism, co-ordinated and funded by the United Nations Development Programme. Commencing in Copenhagen, the course will move on to Khartoum and, unless the scurity situation prohibits, take its participants straight to Darfur. (2-FEB-05) 

Following the peace accords between the north and the south of the country signed 9 January, Sudan has attracted more of the international attention than in years. The maion rason for this is that the accords are seen as a milestone not only in Sudan’s, but also in all of Africa’s recent history. The accords bring hope that the peoples of the biggest country in Africa, possibly also one of the richest, may find new ways to live in peace with each other, something they have not done for more than twenty years.

Darfur left out, but the present accords may prove positive there, too
Hilde Frafjord Johnson, the Norwegian Minister of Development, has played a key role in brokering the deal, and was present, together with the US ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell, at the signing ceremony. In an article in the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang yesterday, she emphasised the suffering the Sudanese have been subjected to, and argued that this agreement may also be the beginning of the end of the conflict in Darfur, which has so far been left out of the accords. The accords commit the previously warring parties to democracy, good governance and human rights and the former guerilla mivement SPLA is to transform itself into a civil entity.

A landmine each for the five million IDPs and refugees
The challenges are particularly big in the war-ravaged southern parts of the country, bordering with Uganda. Here, more than five million people were forced away from their homes, either elsewhere within Sudan, as IDPs, or across the borders, mostly to Uganda and Chad. Five million landmines will also have to be located and removed, ideally at a minimum human cost. Finally, the mental wounds among the surviving caused by the loss to the war of more than two million lives will also have to be healed, somehow. All this requires a completely different and far more equal distribution of the country’s resources and goods, which have so far been disproportionally enjoyed inb the north, at the expense, once again, of the south, where also profound modernisation is urgent.

-Possible consequences for Uganda
The peace accords include a paragraph opening for the southern parts of Sudan to decide, in 2011, through a general referendum whether or not to secede and become a country and a nation of their own. -Given the discrimination the peoples of the south feel they have been subjected to, ever since independence in 1956, in some ways even further back than that, I consider it likely that a clear majority will vote in favour of a separation from the north, comments Harbitz. -I fear, however, that this may well affect the relation to Sudan’s neighbour further south, Uganda, wherethe northern regions, for similar reasons, feel neglected and discriminated against by the south. We may well see this develop into another secession battle, by the people of northern Uganda, to join their fellow ethnic groups in what is now southern Sudan rather than remaining under the dismissive reign of the current, and most probably continuing presidency of Yoweri Museveni.

-Two birds with one stone
-The journalism course I will attend next month is a golden opportunity, says Harbitz, -for a rapid rise of HRH’s regional competence. Given our interest and also attempt to support human rights groups in the north of Uganda, and the fact that almost anything and everything happening there is immediately affected by the developments in Sudan, there is every reason to learn and know as much as possible about the peace process, and Darfur’s possible influence on that. In addition, with our ambition to make this website a high quality, reliable and permanently up-dated source of human rights related news and information, we need to know, in as much detail as possible, how to report on these issues. For HRH, this course may well prove to kill two birds with one stone.