Developing Darfurian Unity
Developing from our work on Sudan as a whole since 1999, our regional work with Darfurians started soon after the Darfur conflict broke out in 2003. Against a background of international awareness of conflict and suffering in Darfur, we were able to raise funds from private individuals, churches, charities and community groups to support a series of consultations for key Darfurians from armed opposition groups, government and civil society. This process started with a consultation on land use and tenure in September 2004 and, at participants' request, continued in December 2004 with one on cultural, political and economic marginalisation of the region, and in August 2005 with a similar meeting on enabling the sustainable and safe return and reintegration of the displaced in Darfur. These consultations brought together leaders from all sides who would not normally have been able to talk to each other and helped them to seek constructive solutions on these crucial issues.
The conclusions of these three consultations were provided in September 2005 to the parties and African Union mediators involved in the formal negotiations in Abuja, Nigeria. Taken together, these documents represented consensus between key individuals from all parts of Darfurian society on some of the most important causes of the Darfur conflict. Many of these issues were not part of the negotiations. However, failure to reach agreement on them would mean that any agreement would be incomplete. We maintained close contact with the official negotiations while they were ongoing and tried to encourage this broader view; our activities during this period included an expert workshop for negotiating teams on power-sharing arrangements and protracted attempts to bring the various armed movements together informally to agree common positions on the significant issues. Although an agreement – the Darfur Peace Accord – was signed in May 2006, two of the three armed movements refused to sign it, claiming it had been thrust on them prematurely. Fighting escalated and we have continued – within our limited capacity - to work towards an inclusive dialogue that will contribute to ending the violence.
Our foundational work in support of the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation (DDDC) unit of the African Union, in designing and implementing a series of consultations in its “Common Ground” process, continues to bear fruit. In addition to facilitating two Darfurian consultations, the conceptual work we undertook in 2008 included preparing material in English and Arabic on the most important ‘Common Ground’ issues (security, land and natural resources, administration and democracy, recovery and development, identity and reconciliation). As part of the dialogue process that we helped to conceptualise and implement, this material has been used extensively in Darfur as the foundation of engagement between community leaders, youth leaders and women’s groups.
Following our work in partnership with the DDDC unit, we were asked by an inclusive non-official group of Darfurians to facilitate a strategic consultation on ‘Developing Darfurian Unity’. This meeting took place in June 2008, built on our earlier Darfur work and brought together senior Darfurians from a variety of ethnic, social and political backgrounds, in their personal capacities, with assistance from Sudanese and international experts. As a result of this consultation, the participants articulated a common vision: that all Darfurians’ efforts be combined and directed towards a united, secure, stable, advanced and developed Darfur within a united Sudan. Over the following months, Concordis worked with a representative coordinating committee to extend this vision further. The aim was to engage the full range of Darfurian tribes, political parties, civil society groups and opposition movements in developing a case for Darfurian unity and coexistence in a way that would provide hope to demoralised populations and inject some momentum and credibility into the moribund peace process. This is a patient and delicate process, with many competing interests at play, and Concordis has remained partially involved as others took over the process and worked with limited success towards a larger Darfur civil society conference. We are pleased to have been a catalyst in this initiative to develop Darfurian unity and will continue to work with Darfurians towards this end.
Our aspiration remains to focus on building consensus on the long-term issues underlying conflict in Darfur. Issues will be selected in collaboration with a small but inclusive group of Darfurians but may include transitional justice and reconciliation, land policy, refugee and IDP return and the vicious cycle linking environmental pressures and conflict.
