Threatening Peace

A major upsurge in violence in Africa’s Sudan is threatening the country’s 2005 peace agreement according to a coalition of aid agencies based in the south of the region. “’’Sudan is at a crossroads,’ the 10 agencies say in a report released Thursday, ‘and the next 12 months could determine the future of Africa’s largest nation.’ The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, which ended a 21-year civil war between north and south, is ‘extremely fragile’ the agencies add. ‘The humanitarian situation, already one of the worst in the world, is deteriorating; and in the eyes of most ordinary southerners, meaningful post-war development has been absent.’ In a news release issued with the report, one of its co-authors, Oxfam policy adviser Maya Mailer, warned that if violence in the south escalated even further, the situation could become ‘one of the biggest emergencies in Africa in 2010.’”