Panelists Discuss Sudan Referendum

Panelists at yesterday evening’s discussion on the Sudanese Peace Agreement emphasized the importance of the 2011 referendum for stabilizing the region to an audience of students and Boston Sudanese community members in the Tsai Auditorium.

The proposed Southern Sudanese referendum, scheduled for January 2011, would determine if the region would become an independent state.

Overshadowed by the genocide in Darfur, the destabilization of Southern Sudan has received relatively little media attention, panelists said.

“It is impossible to get any media traction unless it looks like it will explode and fall apart,” said David Gressly, the regional coordinator for all United Nations activity in Sudan.

Professor Alex de Waal, a senior fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, stressed the danger in the loss of international interest in Southern Sudan. He stated that internationalism is a necessary facilitator, although the solution must come from the Sudanese people.

Southern Sudan is currently marked by the targeted violence of regional elites asserting their importance and the widespread violence of the responding government, de Waal said, adding that he hopes for a situation of “managed disorder.”

While Gressly agreed that the current situation in Sudan is unstable—noting the probable delays in the upcoming January 2009 elections—he said the 2011 referendum is a necessary benchmark that cannot be delayed.

“This is no time to send in the C team or even the B team,” he said of diplomatic involvement in the region.

Gressly said the referendum hinges on the historically denied right of self-determination in the oil-rich South, which has been at war for 40 of the last 50 years.

Jennifer Leaning, the co-director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, addressed the hesitancy of many Southern Sudanese to return home without well-defined land rights, community, and a sense of future.

“The top three priorities must be security, security, security,” she said.

As the panel came to a close, a professor from the African Languages department reminded the audience that it wasn’t too late to add a Southern Sudanese language to their study cards.