Project Ploughshares and the Nairobi-based Africa Peace Forum (APFO) began working together to support peace in Sudan in 1999. In 2005 they launched a project to research policy options to overcome obstacles to the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in January 2005. At the end of January 2008, this project was concluded.

Funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the project commissioned research papers on emerging security issues related to CPA implementation and held a series of four roundtables—two in Nairobi and two in Juba, Southern Sudan—in which this research was discussed, analyzed and developed.

The project created space for the perspectives of a wide range of international, national and local stakeholders, including civil society representatives, academics and government officials.

Topics that were examined in depth include

• Challenges to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
• Hazards in the power-sharing aspects of the CPA during the interim period
• People-to-people peace initiatives
• Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) in Southern Sudan
• Small arms legislation and control mechanisms in Sudan
• Armed groups, DDR and the CPA
• Regional security and the implementation of the CPA
• Small arms control and community security in Southern Sudan.

The last workshop was held December 4-5, 2007 in Nairobi.

Six years after implementation, the CPA has experienced both advances and setbacks. The coalition government between the North and South, the Government of National Unity (GONU), has been set up, as well as the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS), along with revised constitutions, a standing parliament and Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) Commissions for the North and South.

Political progress has been hampered by many obstacles, including disagreements over the North-South border, the frequently delayed population census, the large number of small arms and light weapons in civilian hands, weak security structures that include both the police and the military and a lack of transparency by the North in sharing oil wealth.

Southern Sudan continues to suffer from the lack of such basic infrastructure as paved roads, electricity, health-care facilities and schools.

Southern Sudan held its referendum on separation in the middle of January 2011. But much work on the Sudanese peace process remains to be done.

Research papers and reports generated by the project

Regional Security, Gender Identity and CPA implementation in Sudan
Jessica Davis, Judith McCallum and Alfred Okech

Security Threats to CPA Implementation in Sudan
Xanthe Scharff, Dan Alila and Khalid Ahmed

Building Capacity for Sustainable Peace in Sudan, Roundtable Report

Hazards in the Power Sharing Aspects of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement during the Interim Period in the Sudan
Alfred Lokuji

Overview of the Challenges to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
Alfred Lokuji

photo: Paul Banks/UN