Evidence of meeting #32 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was south.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

James Dean  Emeritus Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
Elsadig Abunafeesa  Senior Political Officer (Retired), United Nations Mission in the Sudan
Mark Simmons  Country Director, FAR Sudan

3:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

I want to welcome everyone to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, meeting number 32, as we look at the ramifications of the referendum in Sudan.

Before us today we have James Dean. I like that name, James Dean. That's a great name. Mr. James Dean is from Simon Fraser University.

We also have Mr. Abunafeesa, senior political officer with the United Nations Mission in Sudan. I'd like to welcome you as well, sir.

I believe that Mr. Simmons is on a plane coming from New York, so I think we'll do the same thing we did the last time. We'll get started with our witnesses. We'll give you each seven to ten minutes to do your presentation, and then we'll ask questions and go around the room. I'll give further instructions in terms of how that will work before we get started. Then we'll work in Mr. Simmons when he arrives. We may have started questions already and we'll go from there.

Mr. Dean, in your remarks you said you had some maps that you wanted us to hand out. I would need unanimous consent. They are not in French and English, but they are maps of Sudan that you were going to refer to in your presentation.

Do I have unanimous consent to be able to hand these out to members?

3:35 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

3:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Okay. We'll do that as well, if that's all right.

Why don't I start with you, Mr. Dean? We welcome you. We'll let you make your presentation. The floor is yours, sir.

3:35 p.m.

Prof. James Dean Emeritus Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I am a retired professor of economics from Simon Fraser University, but I've spent the last four months in Juba, southern Sudan, as senior advisor to the Bank of Southern Sudan. I've been working for Deloitte under a contract to USAID.

Our mandate was to help the Bank of Southern Sudan become independent from the Bank of Sudan, which is based in Khartoum; they will presumably vote for independence on January 9, 2011. The overriding concern we had was installing a new currency.

We had our initial meeting early in June, in Nairobi, with half a dozen senior Bank of Southern Sudan officials. We said you should use the U.S. dollar for the time being because everybody uses it anyway and it would be chaos to introduce a new currency. Within half an hour they had turned this completely around and said that's absolutely unacceptable; we want our own currency, as a symbol of independence.

That was a financial challenge, to make a new currency credible. After the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement, for example, the governor of the Bank of Southern Sudan, who is still the governor, permitted the photocopying of money so he could pay off the southern people's liberation army. Naturally, that money was not very credible.

But I'm not going to talk today about the problems of installing a currency, unless you want me to. I'm going to focus on Canada's role in Sudan, as I understand it.

I think we spend about $117 million a year in Sudan, mostly on Darfur and southern Sudan. Proportionally we spend more than the U.S. I believe we're the third largest donor, after the EU and the U.S. Since fiscal year 2004-05, we've spent over $1 billion.

About $100 million of the $117 million is spent by CIDA and $17 million is spent by DFAIT. I understand that DFAIT's projects are largely security related. We have RCMP officers who are training southern Sudanese police, including police women, and we have about 50 military advisors there. I'm not sure what they do because, unlike the Americans, we are not training the southern people's liberation army to move from being a bush army to a real army. We don't do that. But we do provide security support for delivering food and vehicles for part of the UN's effort and a lot of other things.

CIDA's projects, the $100 million, are focused on food aid and food security--delivering the food--on welfare and education of children and youth, and on institutions, governance, and justice. We're also putting money into supporting the EU's monitoring of the January 9 referenda. There are two of them, as you probably know: one in southern Sudan, and another one in Abyei, which is a contested area just north of the border. We're also going to support the Carter Centre with their election monitoring.

Like other donors, we spend a lot of money on short-term so-called emergency aid. That's to deliver food and to help avert the almost daily firefights and atrocities that occur in Darfur and between tribes in the south, especially between the two majority tribes, which are the Dinka and the Nuer. That's not to mention the firefights and violence instigated by civilian militia groups, such as the Lord's Resistance Army, which comes from Uganda and has now taken refuge in southeastern southern Sudan.

Both the north and the south have long histories of using these civilian militias. And both the north and south use their own greed and grievances at the time to attack territory in dispute, using these militias as proxy. It's probably true that the north is now using militia more than the south. Certainly that's what we were told by our friends in the south. The north is using these militia to stir things up in the south and in Abyei, with the intent of delaying or discrediting the upcoming independence votes scheduled for January 9, 2011.

The alternative to emergency aid is long-term investment in sustainable development. Schooling and health are obvious candidates. Children are now back in school, after 20 years of civil war and recruitment as child soldiers. But beyond elementary or, at best, high school, the prospects for education are dim.

I visited the University of Juba once when I was there, and it's a delightful place. They have a wonderful faculty of art, music, and drama—I'm a musician and I loved it—but they have no economics department, no business faculty, and no law school. Juba is kind of a cesspool of dirty water, mosquitoes, and cow dung, and that breeds cholera, yellow fever, meningitis, and of course malaria. Everybody gets malaria.

It's also kind of a cesspool of thuggery and murder. Now, to be fair, it's much better than it was even two or three years ago. In fact, people tell me they feel safer on the streets in Juba than they do in Nairobi, which now has the nickname “Nairobbery”. Nevertheless, we had all kinds of things happen. We had intertribal fights at the bars. Much to our annoyance, of all the foreign aid groups, those of us working for Deloitte were not allowed to go out after 10 o'clock at night, I think because they thought we would sue them. But the UN is out until two in the morning getting stabbed, getting into bar fights, and all kinds of stuff. Our security adviser told us about that every morning to scare us from staying out late.

Schooling and education are no-brainers, but it's much more difficult to foster long-term economic growth, independent of foreign aid and oil, because southern Sudan is almost totally dependent on foreign aid and oil. Foreign aid is running at about $2 billion a year, but that doesn't go into the average person's pocket. In fact most of it probably lines the pockets of consultants and goes back out of the country. Oil is virtually the only export. There is agriculture, but it's relatively small. Oil is the major export by far, and oil revenue is about $2 billion a year.

Oil revenue represents 98% of the government's non-aid revenue, and about 30% of the budget of southern Sudan's government is for the military and mostly imported equipment—recently helicopters, when I was there, and some out-of-date Russian tanks. In short, some of the oil and government money disappears into private pockets, and it's typically deposited abroad, or at least across the border in Kenya.

To summarize, about $4 billion a year flows into southern Sudan, and about half is from foreign aid and half from oil, plus a few hundred million as remittances from the southern Sudanese diaspora living abroad, sending money back.

The population of southern Sudan is a little over eight million, so from government revenue alone, if you divide the eight million people into $4 billion you get about $500 a year that should go into each person's pocket. Very little income is generated by domestic production, and much of the domestic production is production in kind. It's cattle, subsistence food crops, and so on, that are never traded and therefore never monetized. But the per capita income in Sudan is not $500 a year; it's less than $300 a year, or about 80¢ a day. Admittedly, that $300 a year ignores all the income in kind, like delivery of food aid, which is substantial. Nevertheless, $200 million are missing, and a lot of that is from capital flight--wealthy, powerful people sending money abroad--or wasted aid.

So the difference between what flows into the region and out again, just to repeat, is in military spending, wasted aid, and corruption. To put it another way, most of the money that flows into southern Sudan flows out again by way of military imports, consultants' incomes, not that consultants are completely useless--I was one—and capital flight.

Any country that relies heavily on either oil or foreign aid is subject to disincentives to develop other sources of income. Moreover, the oil production in Sudan is likely to peak in 10 or 12 years. So it's imperative for Sudan to develop another export industry. The best prospect is agriculture. Sudan is not only the largest country in Africa, it is one of the most fertile. The beautiful Nile River runs from Uganda in the south all the way north to Egypt. There's the Blue Nile. We were encamped on the White Nile in Juba.

Traditionally the main agricultural enterprise has been cattle. The southern Sudanese particularly are cattle herders. They don't call them cattle in Sudan. They are genderless, but they call them cows, whether they're male or female. We had herds of cows right beside our camp, and there was an abattoir and they were slaughtered as we slept; the stench was terrible.

What I'm getting at is that now agribusiness, big, large-scale agriculture in crops, is well under way: cotton, maize, palm oil, and even flowers. It's particularly under way in the north, but there's more potential really in the south because the south is more fertile. The agribusiness, like the oil, is funded and organized by foreign firms. Most of the oil is funded and organized by the Chinese, but the agriculture is subsidized by the Middle East and a lot of other people.

So far, so good, and there's nothing wrong--as an economist, I don't think there's anything wrong, in principle--with foreign direct investment. But in Sudan, principle has floundered in the face of unprincipled investors, who are aided and abetted by Sudanese government officials, both in the north and in the south. In the past year alone, southern Sudan's department of agriculture has sold off thousands of hectares, millions of acres, of fertile land to foreign firms. Now, there's nothing wrong with that either, in principle. Here in Canada we sell off our birthrights of oil and potash to foreigners. But in practice what's happening, I'm told, in southern Sudan and in the north is that communities and tribes and subsistence farmers have essentially lost their traditional tenure on the land. There are virtually no land tenure laws in northern Sudan.

Since the food shortage in 2007, the Sudanese government, mostly in the north but increasingly also in the south, has sold or long-leased--a long lease is typically 70 years--hundreds of thousands of hectares, millions of acres, of agricultural land. They're now leasing more land long term than any other country in Africa--

3:50 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Professor Dean, I'm just going to ask you to wrap up. We're going to get this translated for you to get it out to the MPs.

3:50 p.m.

Emeritus Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Prof. James Dean

I've got a little example of a land grab here, but let me just read what I've got in italics. The upshot is that these agricultural sell-offs are very likely to stoke the fires of further intertribal violence, because evicted farmers migrate to new lands and they attack or are attacked by traditional tillers and grazers of those lands. This was the legacy of the long-lease of oil rights to the Chinese in the late 1990s--the local people forced off their lands--and it could well be the legacy of the current rush to long-leased agriculture and agribusiness.

I just want to close by saying that CIDA has funded some of the NGO work on land tenure in the south, and I think this committee should inquire whether in CIDA's informed opinion the new land tenure laws are adequate or even properly complied with, because what I hear over and over again is that they're not. CIDA has to respect the sovereign decisions of national governments. CIDA's contract is that they can't just walk into the minister of agriculture's office in Juba and demand to know whether the letter and spirit of the new land tenure laws is being respected. But my understanding is it's not and that the ministry is signing very lucrative deals and putting people off their land.

I think this is an issue that maybe hasn't received enough attention. It's a long running issue and it's a complex issue, because agribusiness will increase productivity in agriculture and they need that. It's largely for export and it's not necessarily going to get into people's bellies.

Thank you.

3:50 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Thank you, Professor Dean. I appreciate that.

We're now going to move over to Mr. Abunafeesa, who is going to provide input.

The time is yours, sir. You have 10 minutes.

3:50 p.m.

Elsadig Abunafeesa Senior Political Officer (Retired), United Nations Mission in the Sudan

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to address the members of the standing committee of the House of Commons.

My thanks also go to Ms. Christine Vincent, for she was the link between me and this respected committee.

I have the pleasure to say that this is my second time addressing a standing committee here. Four or five years ago I was introduced by the Honourable David Kilgour. That was before the war in Iraq, and I was working for the United Nations in the Middle East at that time.

I have handed out some information about myself, but I would like to say something about that. I just retired from the United Nations. My last position was in Sudan. I also worked with the United Nations for 17 years in their peacekeeping division. I was over almost all the world, in the field. For a short time I worked in New York. I was in Cambodia in 1991 and 1992. Then I was moved to South Africa for peace promotion and observation of the elections in 1994, which were the fairest multi-ethnic, multi-racial elections. I was in the northern part of South Africa, which was the most critical and dangerous area.

At that time I had the pleasure of knowing the Speaker of Parliament, Mr. Peter Milliken, who was there; the former Secretary of State for Latin America and Africa, Christine Stewart; David Kilgour; and some other people.

I was also in Afghanistan twice. I saw two or three governments fall in Afghanistan. I spent three years in Afghanistan and was there again after the war for a while. I was in Iraq twice. I was in the Oil-for-Food Programme for three years, and then I was in the green zone after the war for three years. I was also in northern Ghana for resolution of conflict and to address the problem of proliferation of small arms. I was also a former member of parliament in Sudan for some time.

However, before going straight forward on Sudan, I would like to say that the eclipse of the multilateral world in the post-Cold War period brought us into a world of insecurity, instability, and terrorism, with financial and political problems that impacted not only the developing world, but the advanced world.

Sudan is the largest country in Africa and the richest in resources. It is a pioneering country in democracy in Africa. Sudan's independence was in 1956. Its first democracy was from 1956 to 1958. Then there was a military coup for two years, and then another democracy for less than four years. Then there was another military coup that stayed for 16 years. There were then three years of democracy, and then a military coup that has remained in Sudan for the past 21 years. That gives you an idea that Sudan has suffered over 40 years of military rule, compared to 11 years of democracy. Those 11 years were not straight.

Before the 40 years, until the late 1960s, Sudan was known for being a peaceful country, having good relations with its neighbours and with the international community. For the last 40 years exactly, from 1970 onward, we started to have problems.

Today Sudan is in a position to be or not to be the largest country in Africa. The reason is the continuous wars without United Nations attention at all--I say “at all” because I worked in the United Nations and I'm a Sudanese Canadian and I know what was going on there. The UN was not there at all.

However, for the last 20 years, the current regime has treated the south in a different way from previous military or civilian regimes. Wars between the south and the north started in 1953 and continued until 2005, with some periods of negotiation and reconciliation, especially the one in 1971. That stayed for 11 to 12 years, and then the military regime aborted it. People went to war until 1983, and then again until 2005, when the peace accord took place.

The major problem of the peace accord, or the CPA, as people say, was that it was not a United Nations peace accord. The United Nations had no role at all in the CPA. The CPA was influenced by the United States and some European countries.

Of course, political parties in Sudan, and all the Sudanese, agree that brothers in the south have the right to self-determination. But the way the CPA came about I think damaged the situation in Sudan.

Even if the south separates, there are questions about the relationship between the south and the north, let alone, of course, the situation in Sudan. Other secessions and separations might be in the pipeline. That is because of the way the CPA, or the Naivasha treaty, was made.

The regime in Sudan bears most of the blame with regard to this CPA, but I'm going to say that the United States also bears part of that blame. The international community, or the United Nations, as such--pre-Cold War, post-Cold War era--was for unity, especially with regard to nation states.

Nation states are composed of a variety of cultures, races, and everything. That's why the United Nations, according to the charter, has to maintain international peace and unity of states, not dismemberment of states. Unfortunately, we have come to an era, at the eclipse of the multilateral system, where we are now witnessing disintegration in some parts of the developing world.

In the case of Sudan, which is in Africa, it is the only exceptional case of secession taking place.

Eritrea separated, or actually Eritrea became independent from Ethiopia because it was not part of Ethiopia. Eritreans are different people.

Therefore, the issue of Sudan, I think, also might have some implications or ramifications for Africa, especially in neighbouring countries, such as Congo, Uganda, Kenya also, even Ethiopia--there are also minorities there--and even Chad, where the Arabs and others also have other problems.

So while several parts of the world are in the third millennium and are coming together, people are coming together and trying to unite, regrettably, the situation in Sudan, or in Africa, or in the largest countries of Africa, is one of dismemberment.

4 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

I know 10 minutes is not enough time. All of you could spend at least an hour or so. I'll just ask you to wrap up.

4 p.m.

Senior Political Officer (Retired), United Nations Mission in the Sudan

Elsadig Abunafeesa

Okay. I will wrap up.

There are various expectations for post-referendum. People speak about war. The boundaries are also one of the problems, the debts, the southern Sudanese in the north, and vice versa, the northern Sudanese in the south, and Abyei is a hot spot.

Of course, there is the issue of nationality. Is it going to be dual nationality or not? Still, there are some things put up for discussion. There is also the issue of the border, as I said.

These are the major issues. There is also the problem of the debts. Sudan's debts are an issue for disagreement or agreement. There is a need to deal with these issues.

However, I will stop here. I am ready for any queries.

4:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Sure. Hopefully, we'll get some during questions and some other information. Thank you very much.

We're now going to welcome Mr. Simmons. I understand you drove in from Burlington, Vermont, to be here today, so thank you. You're with FAR Sudan. I'm not really knowledgeable about that organization. You can maybe tell us a bit about your organization. You have 10 minutes, and as you get close, I'll try to get you to wrap up. Then we'll go to questions from the members.

4:05 p.m.

Mark Simmons Country Director, FAR Sudan

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I apologize for my lateness. The only way I could get here from Khartoum was to fly through New York to Burlington and to then drive up from Burlington. So I've come straight from Khartoum, via New York and Burlington.

I should tell you something about my organization first. I direct an organization called FAR, which is based in Toronto. It's a Canadian organization. I'm also the vice-chair, currently, of the INGO Forum. I represent 72 international NGOs in northern Sudan. For the last four years I've been either chairing or co-chairing the INGO Forum, so I come with that perspective as well. Before I worked for FAR, I worked on the peace process in Naivasha and then in Abuja and Asmara, to the east of Sudan.

That's something brief about my background.

It's good to have the opportunity to be back in Canada. Thank you very much for that.

As I started to say, I come from a Sudan that is quite fearful at the moment. There's a lot of uncertainty about the future, and people are very nervous. There's conflicting information coming about the future with regard to citizenship, population movements, and that kind of thing. There's a lot of intimidation and a lot of pressure to vote in the referendum in a certain way. People are being beaten up if they're suspected of voting for unity—that's southerners in the north. We've recently had the expulsions, also, of Arab groups from Upper Nile in the south and an increasing movement of southerners from the north to the south.

My agency runs the wharf in Kosti, in White Nile, which is a place that all the IDPs going to the central and southern part of southern Sudan pass through as they travel on the barges. We've seen an increase from 800 people last week to 6,000 this week. There is a dramatic increase in people moving southwards. This is in advance of the registration period, which starts, as you know, in just under two weeks.

I think one of the challenges we face, always, in Sudan is the question of numbers. You've heard in previous submissions to this committee differing figures of citizenship in Sudan, from 8.2 million up to 16 million. To register to vote, you have to trace your lineage back to a southern tribe. That's usually meant to be within four generations. I dread to think where Canadians would come from if you were allowed to claim nationality from four generations back. Clearly, there's a challenge there about who is really southern and what that means for the vote.

We've moved to a place where the government, in a sense, has tried to downplay significantly the number of southerners in the north, because they feel that to be to their advantage. Now they're quickly trying to inflate the numbers of southerners in the north. We've gone from a claim of one-half million southerners in the north to claims of between 1.5 million and 2.7 million southerners in the north. That's quite significant. On the other hand, even if one added to the figure of 10.5 million southerners taken at the CPA, the 2.7 million maximum figure that's been quoted by some sources, and if you assume a normal developing world demographic--meaning half the population is under 18 and therefore half is eligible to vote--we'd still need, even if everybody in the north at the maximum figure voted for unity, one in eight people in the south to vote for unity for a majority to win. So I think we can assume that the south is going to separate.

For us as NGOs, I think that has two main impacts, and I should focus on those, given the limited time. One is the question of contingency planning--how to plan the repositioning of resources, how to anticipate the movement of people, and how to respond to those needs--particularly, for example, the question of UNMIS. It is being asked to provide more troops for the border area. But it is also being asked to provide support for the referendum process. How will they balance, with their limited resources, the need to be manning polling stations and the need to be manning the border where the oil fields are and where the likely clashes will be? That will be a significant challenge.

The other one, of course, is humanitarian access.

At the moment, in Darfur, you have a northern government still bombing. And they don't have military reasons for doing this; they have terrorizing reasons for doing this. I hesitate to say this in a public forum, but I think it's very clear that the Government of Sudan has a dual strategy. One is trying to starve populations whom they believe to be supportive of rebel groups by denying any humanitarian agency the access to those areas and basically forcing them to have no food, no water, and no basic services. It's slightly better this year because we had a good rainy season, which is just finishing, so the situation is perhaps not as bad as it would have been this time last year. The other strategy the government has is to try to incentivize recovery, or use recovery as a political tool--I should express it like that. They will go to an area and say, if you stop harbouring rebels, we'll build you a school. They come to us, the NGOs, and say, go to that village and build a school; we promised them one. We say, no, we can't possibly do that. We would then be a political tool of the government and we take the fall for there being no service provided.

We're in a very difficult position, politically, where the discourse has moved away from the basis of need towards using humanitarian intervention as a political tool, and that's something we're very cautious to avoid where we can.

The reason I mention this in the context of this committee--looking particularly at the referendum--is there's a good chance that the government in the north and the government in the south, which I'm afraid, in a kind of Stockholm syndrome way, has copied many of the mistakes of the north, will deny access to humanitarian workers of any area where they feel the local population is not entirely supportive of them. That could be, for example, the entire Kingdom of Shilluk in Upper Nile--I don't want to get too geographically specific because I don't know how well you know the country. There are going to be areas of the country where the people are not necessarily considered to be entirely supportive of the northern government or the southern government where we could well be denied access and where services will not be provided.

I think perhaps I'll leave it there, because that gives enough of a flavour for now and I don't want to overuse my time. We can wait for questions if there are more clarifications required.

4:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Thank you, Mr. Simmons. I appreciate that.

We're going to go around the room on the first round of seven minutes, questions and answers, and then we'll follow that up with as much time as we have until 5:30, with questions of five minutes back and forth, alternating among the parties.

I'm going to start here with the vice-chair of the committee, Dr. Patry. The floor is yours, sir.

4:15 p.m.

Liberal

Bernard Patry Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to our guests today.

I have a question for Mr. Dean and Mr. Simmons. If the south Sudan votes in favour of independence next January, without having, at the same time, the referendum in the Abyei region, do you think that in the near future, following the referendum, the Khartoum government will allow or not allow a referendum in the Abyei region?

My second question is this. If the south always votes in favour of independence, what are the potential implications for large-scale population movement coming from the south and also from the neighbouring countries following the referendum?

Merci.

4:15 p.m.

Emeritus Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Prof. James Dean

On the question about Abyei—and then I'll refer this to Mark and Elsadig, because they may know more about it.

I believe that the international community, starting with the United States, is going to do everything it can to ensure that the referendum goes ahead, voter registration or no voter registration. They're still arguing in Addis Ababa about whether to register voters because the demarcation of the area has not been completed. The boundaries are clear, but the actual physical demarcation.... So it's a silly thing to argue about.

The north's strategy will be to move in—what's the name of the tribe in this area?—the Misseriya tribe...they're seasonal cattle herders. They're going to move as many as they can into Abyei to influence the vote. The attitude that I heard in Juba is that we don't want to hang up the possibility of our referendum just because the referendum in Abyei might be delayed. My personal judgment is that it won't be delayed, but it will not be recognized by the north. There will be furious argument about who's entitled to the oil, as you know, that's in Abyei.

The other question, just remind me, was about?

4:15 p.m.

Liberal

Bernard Patry Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

About the population movement.

4:15 p.m.

Emeritus Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Prof. James Dean

I think Mark probably knows more and has a better idea about that than I do. There were, however, fears in Juba that the so-called djellaba Arab traders would be expelled or worse. They're a core part of the economy in Juba. They're good traders, but they're not citizens. When I was there, they were stopping people in vehicles and so on to check their registration. We were told they might even go door to door in our camp to check who we were, but that didn't happen.

The one problem is the possible expulsion of northerners of Arab descent who are living and working, often very productively, in the south. The other possibility, as we heard from Mark, is that anywhere between half a million and a million and a half people might move into Juba. Now Juba has grown from 125,000 maybe five or six years ago to, by some estimates, over a million. It's a remarkably stable community given the piles of foreign aid helping out. In the next half year, if another half million people come in, that could be the biggest problem of all--not to mention these refugee camps.

Maybe Mark has something to say about it.

4:15 p.m.

Country Director, FAR Sudan

Mark Simmons

Thank you.

I think on the question of population movement, one has also to bear in mind that the southerners in the north will not necessarily be welcome in the south. Many of them are considered to be politically on the wrong side because they didn't stay. You have the age-old problem of any refugee community anywhere—the context in Afghanistan is similar—where populations that didn't stay and fight are mistrusted when they return home because they weren't involved in the fight for independence, if you like.

In terms of numbers, we're looking at around half a million who would voluntarily return and probably another million who would be forced out if the government of the north decided they would not be welcome in the south. It's not clear where they would go. I think there's a lot of concern they would end up in sort of no man's land along the border, because they wouldn't be welcome in their host communities necessarily and they wouldn't be welcome in the north. The border is, of course, also where the oil fields are. A lot of land is being demarcated now for oil fields, so is not available for use and for people to camp out on.

You also have in three main areas west of Abyei, around the Heglig-Bentiu area and Upper Nile, long stretches of border between nomadic groups and the river. If those borders are closed, or there's fighting along the border, as we expect, then you have probably a couple of million nomads who can't get their cattle or their camels to water.

That will be a delayed problem that I just raise because the movement won't normally happen until February or March, so it won't necessarily be a movement related, strictly speaking, to the referendum, but it will be a result of potential border skirmishes. So you're looking at movement of somewhere between half a million and possible three million or three and a half million people.

4:20 p.m.

Liberal

Bernard Patry Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

Thank you.

4:20 p.m.

Country Director, FAR Sudan

Mark Simmons

On the referendum, my view is that whether or not the referendum goes ahead, the south will declare independence. That's an interesting question for you, given your history in Canada.

The question of Abyei will really depend on how they share the oil and the status of the Misseriya. If the Misseriya are allowed to vote and the oil can be shared, they can work it out. If they can't, you're looking at another kind of Kashmir situation on a smaller scale, because the population is small. You're talking about a population of about 35,000 people, not three million, but it would still be significant.

4:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Mr. Pearson.

4:20 p.m.

Liberal

Glen Pearson Liberal London North Centre, ON

Mr. Dean, I appreciate very much your insight into this.

My worry around Sudan is that while the civil war was going on, people trusted their military, the SPLA, and others to help care for them. Although foreign aid wasn't really coming into the border regions, they were in a war, so people expected that.

Once peace came after the CPA, people in the border regions expected that a lot of the aid dollars from the west would come up to their regions. That really didn't transpire very much, yet that's where a lot of the war was fought, that's where the oil fields are, and that's where a lot of the Darfur people were coming. Juba, on the other hand, because it was being enticed by southern leaders, was trying to get Canada and others to invest around Juba and build air strips, and all those kinds of things. It seems to me the west bought into that, and as a result, Juba has become this massive arrangement.

I appreciate your challenge to CIDA about farming, but it seems to me the places that are the most toxic aren't getting the development dollars. I've been to those regions and I've seen them. They still complain to this day that Juba will get another university, or whatever, and they can't even get a high school.

We have to figure out as a committee what we will do after the referendum, if it does happen, and how to invest our aid dollars. Can I get your view on that?

4:20 p.m.

Emeritus Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Prof. James Dean

I don't have much of an informed view on that, because for security reasons we were not allowed to leave Juba. But lots of other aid workers in Juba were going up there all the time. It was the rainy season and very difficult to get there, as you well know. So there's the simple problem of finding people who are willing and able to deliver services to those areas. Sometimes even the landing fields are blocked.

I'm not sure whether that's the real reason why we and other donors have not delivered to that area. Is it simply the persuasiveness of the very charming president and vice-president of southern Sudan--particularly the vice-president--who have sucked the money into Juba, or is there something more malicious going on? I don't know.

Do you know?

4:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Make a quick comment, and then we'll come back again.

4:20 p.m.

Country Director, FAR Sudan

Mark Simmons

I think part of it is just that the south copies the north, and the north is heavily centralized, so that's how the south has learned to govern. It's repeating the same error.

My NGO is present in two of the border areas, Upper Nile and Warrap. Our access is okay, provided we work with all communities, which we do. We have quite a lot of funding from CIDA and the European Commission for food, security, and livelihood work in that area. But it's very hard to reach the huge numbers of demobilized or not yet demobilized young people. That's really the challenge in those border areas--those groups of armed young men who don't have anything to do except fight.

I was on my way down to one of our sites in Upper Nile about a month ago. I was hauled out of my vehicle, beaten up, and threatened at gun point. I had my glasses smashed by SPLA soldiers because they said I splashed their vehicle in the road. In a rain storm on a muddy road it's possible. But there's a very high level of aggression among those young people who haven't been harnessed into a police force or been given any alternative livelihood. That's one of the big challenges in those areas.