Discontent grows in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains over peace pact

Discontent grows in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains over peace pact
BBC Monitoring Service – United Kingdom
Published: Jan 25, 2007

Text of report in English by independent USAID-funded Sudan Radio Service on 25 January

There may be growing dissatisfaction in the Nuba Mountains [central Sudan] with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and its impact on the Southern Kordofan region.

Speaking to Sudan Radio Service, the director of the Koinonia Community, Fr Renato Kizito Sesana, believes the Nuba people are not happy with the CPA, saying they have expressed to him a desire to have a referendum that would let them choose to be in the south or north.

[Kizito] “Nothing came out very clear, but between the lines it was quite clear for me at least that they are not very happy that the CPA has left hem behind. It has left them in a position they did not like to be in. They prefer certainly to be given the possibility of choosing with the referendum of where the on dividing line they should stay.”

Fr Kizito was speaking in Nairobi on Tuesday [23 January] at the sidelines of the World Social Forum, where he held a small forum of the Koinonia community, including the Nuba Mountains.

In the same small forum, Koinonia Community for the Nuba Mountains program officer Stephen Amin said that proper implementation of the CPA needs enhanced efforts from all concerned parties. Amin accuses the international community, which helped realize the CPA, of not delivering the humanitarian aid it had promised.