I thank you all for coming. The 70 seconds already have you, Drew.
And today we have the privilege of having with us John Bennett, who is the director of Orchestra Development Consulting.
And he's going to be presenting the findings of a recent graduation of donors report on conflict prevention and disparities in Sudan.
John is a specialist in the evaluation, post-war needs assessment, food security,
internal displacement, rural development relief evaluation in June 15.
We've had many, many years of experience working in Africa and Asia with the director,
country representative, and you need to understand geos is the Real World Food Program.
The Norwegian Refugee Council in Oslo is also the founding director of the Global IDB
Project and a member of the International Advisory Board for ICG Guiding Principles.
He was the U.N. team leader for the post-War Assessment and Recovery Development of B of the Sudan,
leading a team of over 100 people for over 15 months.
He's also been a leader for the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition, evaluating DFID,
dark donors and U.N. programs in Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Southern Sudan and Kenya.
And today he's going to be presenting finding his most recent evaluation on funding to that.
Hopefully, we'll talk about half an hour on about. Thank you.
I thought it was a great idea.
Well, it probably will. It means, really, that I'm getting old. People seem to have done quite a lot of things over the years.
And so I think what I do is what I should, first of all,
just say a little bit more than was in there in relation to to why I want to talk about Sudan.
And the Sudan is one of those countries that I've lived in for a long time.
In fact, it was the very first country I went to almost, and the first developing country I went did back in 1978.
I was a voiceover and then lived in Sudan for about ten years, on and off until 1989 when I was deported.
I was actually imprisoned in Sudan, and then I was deported for making a film for the BBC on human rights in Sudan.
And I happened to be making film when there was a change of government. And Turabi came to power and they sent a message to put me in prison.
And then on the basis of jerry cans of diesel, because I knew the head of security in Juba, this is because I've got out and finished my film.
And and there's a lovely little story about that because because the fellow who is the head of security actually came to me and said,
What are you doing? I said, I'm making a film on human rights. And he said, How long does it take you to finish the film?
I said, Two days. I said, You go away, you finish the film, you come back here and then I'm going to deport you for making the film.
And but the head of security was a Southerner.
And even then, back in 18, 1989, there was still some obviously a lot of tension between north and south.
And he wanted that film to come out, despite the fact that he was given orders from the North to to stop us making the film.
So indeed, we did make the film. Unfortunately for me, that means I wasn't allowed to do it back to the country for 15 years.
I was on the blacklist and the first time that I got back into Sudan between the after 19 nine was was 2004,
when with a special concession and believe it or not, my name was still on the blacklist,
but a special concession was made to allow me to come back and to head up the the UN led joint assessment mission,
which was a sort of preparation for the post-war period in Sudan.
And, and that was when I, when I did quite an intensive period of work both in North and South Sudan, but mainly in southern Sudan.
And that was back in 2005. And immediately after the signing of the well, actually for a year before the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
And I was very much involved in the in the terms of the arrangements around the peace agreement between North and South Sudan,
most of which took place in Kenya, actually in Bashir.
And but that's so that's the background to why I'm here now is that I was involved in the peace agreement between North and south.
I was involved in preparing the Southern government for government because up until that time, they didn't have a government.
The entire country, of course, was ruled from the north.
One of the concessions, one of the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was that there should be a government
of southern Sudan even during the six year interim period that they established.
And the interim period started in 2005, and it was a six year period during which you would have a federal government, if you like, of southern Sudan.
And during that six years, the Southerners would be deciding whether or not they were going to have an
independent country or whether they were going to be part of Sudan as a whole.
So it was a it was a six year decision phase, if you like, that was going to start starting 2005 and Angola then this year.
Now, as you know, the outcome of that is that the Southerners have decided to go for independence.
And it's very likely that on July the ninth this year,
independence will be declared as a result of a referendum that was held earlier, just a couple of months ago.
And so that's the end of this six year period.
And it's very it's been very interesting looking at what's happened over that six year period because you started almost from scratch.
You you know, this is a. Southern government, which didn't exist until 2005, which not only didn't exist,
but was built up from the bottom upwards with people who had no knowledge and no experience whatsoever of running a government.
And everything, almost everything was from scratch.
And it's very unique in that sense, because this is a country that, you know, I mean, obviously, there's been a northern government for many,
many years, and there have been individuals from the South who've been part of that government, but there's never been the government of South Sudan.
And it's one thing having a very small number of elite elites who who who run more or less everything.
And it's another thing having an entirely new country emerging in a period of only six years
and trying to decentralise your government to all these different provinces in the south,
and then finding, not surprisingly, the capacity to actually run the government is extremely low and still is extremely low.
So if one would be very, very pessimistic, you would say that they're heading for trouble.
But if you're optimistic, you would say, well, here's a country that's, you know, that has everything going for it in one sense.
And and there's a great deal of enthusiasm for for the formation of this new state of South Sudan.
So that's the that's the sort of context of it. But what I wanted to do was to, in a sense, just to kick off from where Hugo Slim left last time.
And those of you who were here listening to Hugo will know that he talked about what it was, what it was to be a humanitarian.
And towards the end of that talk, we started to discuss the the modern take on humanitarianism.
In other words, we started to ask the question, well,
why is it that that aid in general has become politicised then much more politicised than it used to be 20 years ago.
It used to be perfectly acceptable for aid organisations to go into countries like Sudan and do nothing but pure aid, if you understand what I mean.
In other words, you know,
they could they could be involved in just doing the health program or education program or a feeding program or something like that,
and not have anything whatsoever to do with the political environment around them.
That is long since gone.
In fact, in the last ten years in particular,
there's been increasing amount of concern from EU organisations that they haven't actually
engaged enough in the political process because everything they do is ultimately political.
It has a knock on effect. And aid itself now has become a resource, particularly in poor countries like Sudan,
a resource which is very visible and can be manipulated by one or another political party
and certainly cannot be divorced from the political process that's happening on the ground.
And that means not only the political process, but also the the the the conflict process, if you like, that is taking place on the ground.
And that's not to say that aid is is always a source of conflict.
That's a different matter. It is occasionally a source of conflict.
And if it is, then then some serious questions have been asked.
But it's it's more the fact that once you once you have the resource on the ground and you have people on the ground,
what happens is that you become a centre of attraction.
You you you can in many ways attract populations to to to the centres that you are running or whatever the activities is that you're running.
And as a result of that, you also become, you know, quite sort of an attraction, if you like, for those who who are trying to make problems.
But I think, moreover, the really real reason why aid has become more political is because aid agencies, in particular Europeans and Americans,
whatever they are,
increasingly becoming the witnesses to a number of activities that are taking the number of events that are happening on the ground.
And it's this this witness function, which is both worrying for perpetrators of conflict,
but also encouraging for those who wish who don't wish to get caught in the midst of this conflict.
And so this as as Hugo was last.
The last talk. We were just getting into this business about advocacy and why it is that a number
of organisations now have shifted away from just pure development activities,
if you like, into into advocacy,
into publicising what they do on the ground and trying to persuade the international community as well as the national
community to change their mode of behaviour as a result of of what they have seen for themselves and can actually witness and,
and write about themselves from what they've seen.
So there is that increasing function, that advocacy function which goes side by side with aid and many of the organisations like Oxfam and others,
of course they they don't see a contradiction between those two and in fact they almost in every way they operate,
they have this parallel function of giving assistance, but also also writing and advocating for change.
And of course, this this this isn't exclusively to to to the aid organisations.
I mean, there are some think tank bodies and bodies like Human Rights Watch whose job it is exclusively to do that.
But I think the important thing is that they are these organisations are getting
more of a voice and more of a hearing at some of the higher levels as well,
including the the General Assembly of the United Nations, etc.,
which will frequently quote reports from organisations that ten or 15 years ago probably would never have got that kind of coverage.
So so there's there's a there's an increased interest in having independent reports on conflict areas, on violations of human rights, etc.
But there's also the fact that what goes with that is a greater amount of
responsibility for those organisations that are engaged in that type of process.
So back to to Southern Sudan and well, the the history of Sudan may well,
I won't take you through the entire history here, otherwise we'll be here all afternoon at least.
But you should remember that this is a country that has actually been in a state of war for quite a long time between north and south.
It goes all the way back to Independence in 1956.
Really, there was a ten year period when they reached an agreement back in in 83, which which gave them a ten year gap,
if you like, in the in the in the intensive side of the conflict between north and south.
But it resumed again ten years later.
And in fact, even during that ten years, there were there were quite a few incidents that showed that there was a rising tension.
And it all goes back even further in history, because certainly when the British condominium,
it was it wasn't actually a strictly speaking, it wasn't a colony of Britain.
It was a condominium. It was called a condominium. And it was an arrangement between Egypt and Britain.
But for all intents and purposes, it was a colonised country.
And during that colonisation process,
the British wanted these certain points to try to separate the South off completely from
the north because it believed that British East Africa would absorb southern Sudan.
And so there was a period when they drew up borders along the north south line and kept the south closed.
And then that was literally called the closed district policy and prevented traders, including Arab traders, from going south.
Now, the reason I mention that is because the knock on effect of that is still being felt today.
One of the very reasons why Southern Sudan was has been very underdeveloped is because of policies which have actually prevented,
if you like, a natural trading and natural interaction between the north and south.
And so consequently, there is quite a huge difference in the development levels of the north and south.
And what it did mean is also that there was a huge amount of migration that took place between southern Sudan and the north,
and people looking for work would come up to the north because obviously that's where the money was.
And coming Canada recent history when they when they discovered oil for example there was even greater amount.
The wealth that was accumulating in the north,
and it was possible for the Southerners to come up and find work and construction industries, etc., etc.
So the boom that hit Sudan in the 1990 and early 2000s was a benefit not only for the North, but also for people who who wanted to get work.
So there has been a huge southern population in the North Sudan and recently,
given this whole referendum business and the and the pending independence of the South.
There's a lot of those people have moved back again to the south, but quite a lot of that have remained behind.
And that was understandable. And it was understood that that would be the case.
But there's been this worry about, well, if we stay behind, will we retain our southern citizenship?
In other words, what will be our citizenship rights? Are we going to be Northerners or Southerners, or are we going to be given or off or worse still,
are we going to be thrown out just as just as happened between the Eritreans and the Ethiopians during their war?
And so this and this this incidentally, has not been entirely resolved.
And there's still some questions hanging over what happens to the Southerners who decided to stay in the north.
But there have been a significant number of those returning to the south,
both from refugee camps and also from the camps and in the country in and around Khartoum.
And this move of people has meant that the population of southern Sudan has increased quite substantially over the last couple of years,
two or three years since the peace agreement.
And this is now going to be a cause of contention to some extent,
because people are coming back after, in some cases, being away for a long, long period of time,
coming back to their traditional areas where they held land and finding, not surprisingly, that some of that land is already being taken by others.
Some of the land has been left just fallow.
And so there's there's nothing there.
The other thing that's very important in the South is the ownership of cattle and the ownership of cattle, rather than being diverse.
Ownership, as well as we had up until some years ago now is concentrated very much in the hands of a few people.
So a few individuals hold vast amounts of cattle.
And this in itself is causing major cultural problems in the South because southerners,
in order to get great wealth, for example, they will need to have young men will need to have cattle.
And if they don't have access to cattle, then inevitably what's happening is that people are turning to violence, to cattle rustling,
to criminal criminality in order to obtain some of the basic means whereby they can then they can assert themselves as individuals, get married, etc.
And so that's the situation that is that is emerging.
And we saw we've seen a lot of that over the last two or three years, quite worrying.
This is this business about how do you how do you resettle a huge population in a
country where the the the underlying cultural norms have not changed dramatically,
and yet the demography of the place has changed quite dramatically.
And not only do you have that whole business about cattle and ownership over land ownership,
but you also have the shift towards the urban areas and Juba and Bor and these sort of areas which you Malecon, which,
which towns which used to be just small towns are now becoming quite substantial
towns because people are and people from the camps who lived in capsule
there all their lives in some cases are now coming back and being much more
attracted to staying in an urban context than they are in the rural context.
And so there's these these kind of pressures are happening in southern Sudan.
And one of the one of the things that we looked at recently was what to what extent has the international community recognised these problems?
And to what extent is the aid apparatus, the aid the aid from the international community?
How is it adapted to these problems? Has it actually responded?
Has it actually reacted by by changing the way in which A is is usually delivered?
And the general answer to it is no. There have not been any major differences.
In the way that AIDS being delivered over the last five or six years.
And therefore, there's not been a significant reaction to the underlying reasons for conflict in the South.
And that's quite worried because it's we have a situation where everybody at the time of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005,
everybody was thinking, well, now we have a peace agreement, now we have peace.
And everybody was talking about post-conflict Sudan and they were talking about reconstruction, rehabilitation.
Incidentally, there was nothing to re in the south at all.
The south was was in such a state that that would be really it was it was a wrong terminology to use.
But the point was that the international aid community was very much in that sort of buoyant state of, well,
we'll bring in lots of resources for education and health and we'll build some roads here and we'll clear the mines there,
etc., etc., and then everything would be fine. What they didn't appreciate was that there was an underlying problem, cultural,
underlying tribal inter-tribal problem, which was going to raise its head at some point.
And indeed that happened. And we foresaw it back in 2000.
We a few of us feel sort of back in 2005, but not enough,
because what happened was that in 2008 there was a great increase in violence in southern Sudan.
And the huge interest, the increase in violence in 2008, 2008, 2009 through till now, in fact, has not been because of the north south conflict.
It's been because of internal problems in southern Sudan, its south south problems and some of it is has been manipulated by the north south issue.
In other words, there've been some political leaders who've armed certain groups against other groups,
etcetera, etcetera, in order to gain some kind of political favour.
There's been this sort of proxy tug of war type of situation going on, but for the most part, these are problems that are long term.
They're not they haven't just happened. Now they're long term issues of things such as capital ownership,
things such as land ownership, things such as inter-tribal conflicts over border areas.
When I think the important I don't mean the border.
I mean border is between certain certain provinces and certainly some provinces within the within the south.
The south is divided now into ten states, what they call the states.
But that's a relatively recent thing, that there are still the traditional boundaries which are more or less tribal boundaries.
And it's the the incursions across those traditional boundaries which is causing a lot of problems.
It's mostly to do with where you go and feed you, take your cattle and you where you graze.
But it can also be about other things as well. But certainly those sorts of problems have been A, misunderstood.
And B, actually, I would say I would say neglected in the sense that everybody had their eyes on the north south issue.
And when the comprehensive peace agreement took place, most of the donors, the international donors,
were under an obligation to keep that comprehensive peace agreement alive.
In other words, to look at the terms of the comprehensive peace agreement and say,
right now we are under as international donors, we are under obligation to to maintain the terms of that agreement.
And, of course, one of the terms of that agreement was that they have to for that for this interim period of five or six years,
they had to assume that Sudan would remain as one country because the six year interim period was supposed to be a test of the idea of unity.
And so international donors were right up until yesterday watching and right up until January the ninth.
And this year, right up until January the ninth, this year,
we were officially obliged to recognise the possibility that Sudan could remain as one country.
So there was a pressure on them not to get involved in anything that would bolster the independence, if you like, of the Southern.
They could talk about the apparatus of a federal government structure.
They could talk about building capacities and training and all these kind of things.
But what they could not do was to get involved in anything that would be seen to be somehow leading towards independence in the South.
Now, that's quite interesting because actually when I as I mentioned about these these issues of of of conflict,
the one thing that was really missing throughout all of this period from 2008,
when the when the conflict erupted again, the one thing that was really missing in the South was a proper approach towards security.
I'm talking about, you know, stable security now.
And they they were still the remnants of the guerrilla army, the SLA, the Sudan People's Liberation Army.
They are still there. They were still operating as if they were still at war.
In other words, they were still operating as a guerrilla army. They were not operating as a national army.
They had not been given assistance to operate as a national army for the reasons
that I think that the the international donors were were reticent about,
you know, touching anything that would look like that would look like bolstering, you know, the independence lobby.
So so we had a situation where where the SPLA were still essentially operating like like a guerrilla army, very poorly disciplined, poorly equipped.
And whenever there were problems that erupted and of course, these are erupting,
you know, all over the place and in some cases unpredictably erupting.
But whenever there was a problem,
what actually happened was that the governors of the different states in the south would simply look to where their local belay division was,
and they would use them almost as a private army and asked them to go and sort out this problem or that problem out in the field
without necessarily going through anything like a central structure and also without any safeguards over the behaviour of the SLA.
So one consequence of this was that this is not always happening, but it did happen quite often.
Was one consequence was that the xbla itself became a predatory force.
It became something that people on ordinary people on the ground began to fear because
of the behaviour of this ill disciplined guerrilla army was something that people,
you know, considered to be. I mean, and there were definitely cases of human rights violations.
There were definitely cases of criminality within the SBI itself.
So there has been a rather than being a national army that people could turn to and look to, for for security,
became in itself a threat to the people just as much as the threat in the sense that some of the some of the
armed young men who were coming in with their guns to steal cattle from neighbouring tribes or wherever.
So there were, there was a warmth like a double threat on people.
So we had a situation on going back to that, that business about who came down to the south and returning displaced people.
We had quite a lot of secondary displacement.
In other words, you arrive back in your village, having been a refugee for 20 years, you arrive back in your village.
You just getting settled in your village and the next thing you know, somebody is coming in with guns.
You don't know who it is. It could be from a neighbouring track.
It could actually be just people who've broken off from the SPL and are engaged in criminality.
But for whatever reason your community becomes insecure and you decide to move on.
So there was secondary displacement taking place.
Similarly, in many parts of southern Sudan where people were actually driven out of their villages once again came to Juba or came to the towns.
So this was very, quite a worrying development. The question is, how did the international community respond?
Well, we had in southern Sudan, we had what was called what is called oneness,
which is the United Nations mission in Sudan, which is was set up as part of this comprehensive peace agreement.
It was supposed to be a peacekeeping force. It was supposed to be positioned in the areas where there was most likely to be violence.
The first thing that went wrong was they put them in the wrong place because they
put them in the towns and they established garrisons around the main towns.
And of course, that wasn't. And the problems were that was most the problems were way out in the countryside.
They didn't have. Well, they had a mandate to respond to that.
But they didn't enact that mandate.
They didn't use that mandate.
So what they tended to do was to have these international forces mostly made up of Africans, but some internationals as well.
And they were positioned in these garrisons and they didn't move out of those garrisons.
And consequently, as a peacekeeping force, they only literally kept the peace wherever the garrisons.
They didn't go out into the countryside. They didn't respond to two incursions or violence as that occurred.
And so nobody could look to the for them either for protection. So you see the situation emerging.
You've got you've got a sort of a very loose xbla, which in some cases is becomes an enemy.
You've got people, armed individuals.
And by the way, the number of arms in southern Sudan has increased hugely.
It went up ten, ten years. Small arms I'm talking about.
So you've got people who who are armed to the teeth, especially the small, with automatic weapons.
And you've got a situation where the UN peacekeeping force is not able to respond to these problems.
So there was quite naturally a quite a large amount of despondency towards and towards the the government,
to the new newly emerging government of southern Sudan.
And quite a lot of frustration expressed by people because they were just saying, well, so where where is our protection?
If if if our security is our primary, primary concern, then who's actually responding to that?
And nobody is. How was that? Or if they were, it was on a very ad hoc basis.
Meanwhile, the international community carried on putting money into education,
health and all this sort of usual stuff without necessarily looking at this kind of thing, this security issue.
And and therein lies one of the great sort of dilemmas, if you like,
in these in the aid world, not just in Sudan, but in other parts of the world as well.
And that is that doing conventional aid, it's all very well.
But in a conflict environment, how do you accommodate that conventional aid?
By having and other forms of aid which can which can bolster or support the security system to enable the ordinary aid to be more successful.
The reason I let me give you a more concrete example.
Instead of talking theoretically, we went out to Upper Nile, for example, and we found three or four schools,
very good schools actually running for some of them, pretty good schools.
I mean, there was they were brick buildings. They were beautifully made. Nice.
All paid for by international donors, all the equipment, everything there.
But they were empty. Why were they empty? Because the children who came to school had to come some miles, in some cases to that school.
They were very happy to come.
They wanted to come, but they'd been three or four incidents of violence along the road and their parents said, no, you can't go to school.
So you have beautiful buildings. Nobody there. Meanwhile, the governor, the governors of the in Upper Nile were saying, well, yeah,
but actually we could keep the schools open if we had the security force that
could just keep that room safe for the children to walk around to get to school.
The problem is that at two things.
First of all, the road is so poor that if anything happened, we couldn't get to it quick enough because the big, huge potholes in the road.
And so nobody's bothered to do anything about that. But also that the police force is in such a poor state that police using the police
to to deal with that kind of situation would be almost like adding oil to the fire,
you know. But but so so the governors themselves recognised the problem and said, well,
it's all very well you coming in with your fancy schools and your clinics and whatever.
But meanwhile they're not being used because there is this security issue and there's nothing that I've got as a governor.
There's no there's no aid to the dying given to bolster the security system to enable those places to stay open.
So. And, of course, you know, they didn't know where to go because there were no if you went to towns,
even if you went back to Juba and you you argue this case in Juba, donors would usually say,
well, actually, we've been we've been putting our money into these what they call pooled funds,
which is sort of jointly funds or all the donors put into one into one pot.
And, you know, it's the people who run that that decide where to put the money.
Well, of course, most of that money was already preordained, you know,
because it was it was it was for education or it was for health or it was for this.
It was for that. It was already determined how to spend that money way back in 2005 in some cases.
So you have this problem of of donors saying, well, we've already given all of our money to this to this pot,
and we are not entirely in control of how that's spent.
But the World Bank is or somebody like that one, of course, you know, the World Bank is the last institution in the world with incursions of violence.
I mean, it was you know, they had them they flew you know, they don't even know Sudan.
They've never been in Sudan and the World Bank right up until very, very recently, that country office for Sudan was in Addis Ababa.
You know, I mean, it is entirely the wrong institution to be to be dealing with this kind of thing.
But on the other hand, there were some donors, including the British government,
who who did recognise the problem and then tried to come around to the problem by creating other small funds.
And and also, incidentally, the British government was.
Pete has been doing some of this reform process within the xbla, but only at the very top and only at the end of June, the end of the moment.
That's just one of the realities of how slowly this process is is operating.
But and but the the issue then becomes, well, okay, if there aren't any obvious demands for this, then how do you respond to it?
Well, of course, the other thing you have to remember is that the wealth agreement that came out of the 2005,
2005 peace agreement allowed 50% of the oil wealth of Sudan to go to the south.
So the Southern Government itself has been sitting on a large amount of money.
It's about $6.7 billion. It's probably more than that much.
I think if you count this year's event coming up to about $7.5 billion has gone to the South Sudan over the last five or six years,
which is a very, very significant amount of money. And it's incidentally per capita that makes southern Sudan richer than Kenya.
And if you're ever wondering if you if people seek, you will. Southern Sudan is a very, very poor country.
Remember this. There are remittances getting out of southern Sudan into Kenya.
Not the other way around. I mean, this country is not poor per capita.
It's very rich per capita. But the dissemination or the distribution of wealth, this is, of course,
concentrated in very, very few hands and in very few places, more to the point.
I mean, Juba has got this enormous buildings going up and one kid who's driving around everywhere.
But you don't have to go very far out of Juba to find absolutely nothing.
So you have a situation where there has been quite a lot of money going into southern Sudan.
Almost all of it has been wrapped up in a huge civil service and the army, the Sbv,
because for the first time the SB, they are started to get regular wages.
So that's another reason why the SB they didn't reduce in size was because they were getting $300 a month on an average salary for a soldier.
And, and for the first time they lost that.
Incidentally, the SB layers, not just the SB slave as we, you know, as a as an army, but it's also for every one person who's got a gun in his hand.
There's another, you know, 20 people behind it, family members or whatever, depending on that country.
So. So when you when you when you talk about an army like the SB alliance of then you're talking about,
you know, sustaining about at least half the population of the whole country.
That's why it's very, very difficult to downsize armies in a context like this.
So you have a situation where the Southern government had lots of money that was tied up in salaries and in the army defence.
And donors then realised that they were basically going to be the only people to spend money on social services.
And that has indeed been the case. And now about 25% of the government budget is accommodated by international donors.
And we never foresaw that back in 2005, when we were doing this whole peace negotiation, we actually thought quite optimistic at the time.
We thought that with all this oil money coming in, the international donors would become less and less important.
What's actually happened is they've become more and more important because of the unforeseen level of expenditure that carried on in the South,
but also because actually oil prices have plummeted in 2008 and it didn't do them any favours.
That didn't because the actual amount of money that they had available went quite dramatically, went down.
And so that's the situation as it is of today in southern Sudan.
And there's this huge optimism for for a new newly emerging country.
A great amount of euphoria over the fact that people have had an opportunity to vote for a new country.
They'll be declaring their independence on July the ninth, but they will still be one of the poorest countries in the world.
They will still only have a few kilometres of hard road.
They will still only have very, very basic education.
Even among those people who are actually running the country have led those people who, you know, have to live in the provinces.
And so it's going to take a long, long time for southern Sudan to get to any stage of normality.
So there's going to be quite a high.
Dependence on international assistance in the country for quite some years.
Yet the question is now, does does the international community get more involved in those issues of security?
The answer is from our side.
From the study that we did in the evaluation that we did is, yes, they should they should get more involved and they should bite the bullet and say,
so to speak, and say, look, you know, this is what's at stake here.
We must get we must get much more involved in building up a viable police force and
a viable army and and ensure that the security is not only the security apparatus,
it's also the judicial apparatus. I mean, it's also the after what happens when people do commit crimes at the moment, you know,
the judicial apparatus in southern Sudan is so poor that you have the only clue
what to do with somebody other than to throw them into one of the prisons,
which are also appalling. But but, you know, there's there's no there's there's a system for dealing with criminality.
So so that's really an urgent and urgent issue which needs to be dealt with very, very soon.
And and and the worst case scenario and of course, you know, everybody's talking about scenarios now,
but the worst case scenario is that this south south issue will get worse and it will be
manipulated by southern southerners who want to have some stake in the new government.
So the whole tribal issue in the South will become even more intense than it is now,
precisely because they see independence and they see the wealth that would accrue from independence as being a resource worth fighting for.
And so you you have this sort of dominance by the Dinka people at the moment, which which has been there for for for many years, of course.
But you've also got the underlying tension between the Dinka and the newer the the the the issue over the shook, which hasn't been resolved entirely.
You've got you've got most of the agricultural wealth in the southern parts, which is actually making it to the areas of southern Sudan.
And you've got you've got all this potential for for and for a conflict between different tribes in the south,
which until now has been kept more or less the it's been kept up.
Apart from the incident that I mentioned. But but but it could become quite serious if if there's not a reasonable distribution of
wealth and a reasonable distribution of political capital to to these various groups.
And anyway, I'll leave it like that, because I've been talking too long and I did say I'm going to do half an hour and look at me now.