Visit to Sudan

Hyat is twenty five years old and lives with her husband and five year old son in the Abuja camp for displaced persons outside the town of El Fasher in the State of Northern Darfur. She is one of over 400,000 persons in that State who have been displaced by the conflict in Darfur.

I met Hyat as she was standing with other women at one of the many water pumps scattered throughout the village waiting for her turn to fill her water jars. She looked well and told me she received good services in the camp. Her son had started school and they had a roof over their head. Yes, she would return to her village, she told me, but only once there was full security. After a moment's hesitation she added that the village also needed water and services. The story of Hyat, I was told, is a common story. Tens of thousands of men, women and children have been uprooted by a brutal conflict and have found safety and a modicum of normal life in camps like the one I visited on a Friday morning. While the conflict has abated to the point where some of the men now return during the rainy season to work on the land, most of the displaced persons remain in the camps.

The crisis in Darfur has received extensive coverage in the medias; and rightly so. There is however more than one story that needs to be told. There is also the story of people like Hyat who will want to go back to their villages but cannot do so because rebels still operate in some of the areas and basic services and development are lacking; in fact they were never there in the first place. Therein lies the dilemma. A solution to the humanitarian situation in Darfur will necessarily require substantial development efforts which can only be launched once peace has been restored. This point was made forcefully later that morning by the Speaker of the State Legislative Council, El Nur Mohamed Ibrahim. Speaking on behalf of the Council, which brings together representatives of the political forces in the State which includes all the rebel movements that signed the Abuja peace agreement in 2006 to end the conflict, the Speaker asked the international community to put greater pressure on rebel movements still operating in the region to sit down for peace talks.

Peace can not be won on the battle ground. It can only come about as a result of political negotiations with all the parties. We are ready to sit down for such talks at any time and any place, and without preconditions, he said. The situation in Darfur is a tragedy not only for the people who have been directly affected by the conflict, but also for people throughout the country and, in more ways than one, for the international community as well. Instead of celebrating the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that put an end to one of the longest wars in Africa and devoting every effort and resource it can muster to making it succeed, the government of Sudan and the international community are today spending enormous amounts of time, energy and resources on a conflict that should already have been put to rest.

The visit to Sudan offered me an opportunity to refocus on the peace efforts and examine how the IPU and its Member Parliaments can assist in the implementation of the CPA. During one week I visited the National Assembly in Khartoum as well as the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly in Juba in the south. Discussions were held with the Speakers and the leadership in the parliaments, leaders of all the political parties, the President of the Republic of Sudan and the First Vice-President and President of the Southern Sudan Government, cabinet ministers, and many representatives of international organizations, academia and the media.

The CPA establishes a unity government and a series of transitional institutions composed of members who are initially appointed by the political forces in the country. They will be replaced through elections in 2009. The CPA is premised on a significant devolution of power and southern Sudan has its own parliament as has each one of the twenty five States that make up the republic. By 2011, southern Sudan will hold a referendum on selfdetermination. While the two main parties enjoy a comfortable majority in parliament - the National Congress Party holds 52 percent of the seats and the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement 28 percent - the parliament makes a determined effort to take decisions by consensus. A recent example involves the new electoral law. The two main parties have been negotiating for many months and during my visit they agreed on a common text. It was tabled before parliament where it will be scrutinized by all the political parties, amended and adopted.

For the national parliamentary elections, the law foresees that 60 percent of the seats will be filled in territorial constituencies through a majority vote. The remaining 40 percent will be filled by proportional representation at the level of each State through two separate lists; one will elect 25 percent women and another will elect a further 15 percent.

The National Assembly in Khartoum can fall back on a long history of legislative work and experience dating back to independence in 1955. Not so the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly which is lacking in procedures, services, trained staff and experienced parliamentarians. The last time I met Mr. Remy Oller Itoring was in 1976 when he was Minister of Education in southern Sudan. Today, he is Deputy Speaker and introduced me to the realities of lawmaking in southern Sudan. So far we have adopted 36 laws and a further four laws are before parliament, he said. However, we are in need of almost everything. We don't have committee staff, we need a resource centre to do research and provide MPs with information. We have no offices in parliament and none in our constituencies.

The discussion with several of the committee chairs was illustrative. They spoke eloquently of the need to build an institution from scratch. Services, staff, procedures; there was a glaring need for everything.

The situation is essentially the same in the twenty five State Legislative Councils, particularly those in the south. Minister for Parliamentary Affairs of the Southern Sudan Government, Dr. Martin Elia Lomurö, would like the IPU and parliaments to provide assistance to all of them. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and AWEPA are extending support, but that is a drop in the ocean and much more is needed, he says.

The women are present in large numbers in the National Assembly as well as in the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly; and they are organizing themselves into caucuses to defend women's rights in politics. The women's parliamentary caucus in Khartoum held a first conference earlier this year and is now looking for support to implement activities.

Their sisters in the south met the day I left to start planning for the 2009 elections. We need attention and support says Mary Kiden Kimbo who is Minister of Gender, Social Welfare and Religious Affairs in Juba. Samia Hassen from the caucus in Khartoum agrees. Everywhere I went I repeated the same message from the IPU. Parliament is the central institution within a democracy through which the will of the people is expressed, laws are passed and government is held to account. It is in parliament that the divergent and often conflicting interests in society are reflected and debated. This role is essential in countries which, like Sudan, are emerging from conflict and building peace. It is possible to build consensus in favour of inclusive policies through political dialogue and negotiation in parliament and, hence, manage and avert outright conflict. In parliament, peace agreements have to be converted into everyday reality through national laws, budgetary appropriations and a vigorous oversight of the government and administration of the country.

I also made the point that IPU's unique contribution to peace building efforts consists of the extensive collective experience of its member parliaments, many of which have had to manage conflict and help to build peace. It is this knowledge and experience which the IPU makes available to parliaments. The IPU also mobilizes support from the United Nations and its specialized agencies and programs with which it enjoys privileged relationships. The Speaker of the Transitional National Assembly of Sudan, Mr. Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Tahir, would welcome such support for the parliament over which he presides as well as for the parliament in the south and the State assemblies. We all need to build up strong research, documentation and information services and we can all do with support in the area of peace and reconciliation, he said.

Speaker Al-Tahir welcomes greater involvement by the Members of the IPU in support of the peace process. We are open to visits from all parliaments and we want them to see and learn for themselves, he says. They can help us a lot by building capacity in our parliaments to legislate and hold our government to account, and by scrutinizing their own government's policies to make sure that they also are supportive of peace and development in Sudan. That could be a very constructive parliamentary action in memory of the victims of the conflicts in the southern Sudan and in Darfur and a way of helping people like Hyat and her family to return to her village and build a better life.