Switzerland sends experts to South Sudan for CPA implementation
September 6, 2007 (BERN) — Switzerland has agreed to send experts to southern Sudan to help implement the 2005 peace agreement that ended Africa’s longest civil war.
The cabinet said it would post a small team of advisors in the area, specialising in fields including international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict and democratic control of the armed forces, Swiss Radio International’s Swissinfo reported.
The two-year old peace deal was built on the foundation of a 2002 ceasefire which was signed by the conflicting parties in a Swiss mountain retreat.
The government’s decision to send experts is based on its belief that it can contribute to the reconstruction of public institutions in southern Sudan.
It comes in response to a request by the Swiss defence ministry.
The team, consisting of up to three experts, could be strengthened by other Swiss specialists for deployments of up to a month. The government emphasised that although the advisors were from the Swiss defence ministry, the missions were purely civil in nature.
The cabinet added that the plan had the approval of both the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the authorities in southern Sudan.
The advisors will join representatives of Switzerland’s Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) already in southern Sudan.
The SDC calls the situation in that part of the country “intractable”, despite the peace agreement. “It has been impossible to implement any substantial development projects,” the agency says on its website.
“However, much needed improvements to basic social services in southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains are possible.”
(Swissinfo)