Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2010

[Prof. James Dean]

The Lord's Resistance Army has encamped itself in the southeast of Sudan. Meanwhile, the World Bank, for very good reasons, is trying to regularize and establish agriculture there. These efforts have become almost impossible because the Lord's Resistance Army has displaced, raped, and committed unspeakable acts on 20,000 people since January. Hundreds of villages have been displaced, and that's going on right now. So there's a vivid example of how difficult it sometimes is to deliver aid and development assistance to the rural areas.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We have to get you in here, so go ahead. Then we'll move on to our next speaker.

[Elsadig Abunafeesa]

Thank you.

I think the situation in Juba or in the south right now, even after the secession that is going to happen, is just like Karzai's government in Kabul, because Karzai has no authority outside of Kabul. Right now the government in Juba, outside Juba, with the differences, which are one way or another now wrapped up in an agreement between the various political forces in the south.... Law and order, apart from Juba, is not that, I think...could be depending on. That's my feeling on it.

Regarding Abyei, there is a lot of talk now between the SPLM, the government, and the United States about reaching some kind of agreement in the south, and at the same time the government will also be cleared from lists of countries using children for war--and actually it has happened. Something like that has already happened, but the government in still on record in the United States with regard to terrorism and all those things.

In Abyei the referendum might not take place, because the people of Abyei are not only the Misseriya. There are people from other tribes within Darfur coming through Abyei with their cattle, not only the Misseriya. So Abyei is a hub of problems, not only for the people who are inside Abyei, but also for other tribes that are there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Dorion.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Gentlemen, thank you for sharing your expertise with us.

Not much has been said about how the north's leaders are behaving in the current conflict, especially with the approaching referendum preparations. Are they giving inflammatory speeches or employing vote-buying methods to try to influence people from the south? This was hinted at when we talked about NGOs that let the government buy, in a sense, the support of certain villages.

I have another question about how people can become registered voters for the coming referendum in the south. If I my understanding is correct, even people living in the north who were originally southerners can vote in the south, as long as they provide proof of having belonged to a tribe from the south for four generations. How can they provide this kind of proof in a country where, I would think, there are very few civil registers? How does that work?

I asked two questions. I'll repeat them, as I'm not sure the interpretation came through. How are the north's leaders behaving at this time? Are they making an effort to win the support of people from the south, or are they resorting to intimidation? In a country without a civil register, how do people go about proving that they have belonged to a tribe of a given region for four generations?

[Elsadig Abunafeesa]

Thank you very much.

For the first question with regard to the Sudanese people trying to intimidate or win over the southerners in the north, I would like to state something very important. The peace agreement was made by the regime in Sudan, not by the Sudanese people. The Sudanese people were not part of it at all. The Sudanese people today also are living in a situation of ambiguity. They don't have a role. They don't have a say at all, because there is not any freedom of speech or anything for the Sudanese people. The major political parties, which of course have most of the people of the Sudan, were not part of the negotiations or the signing or the implementation of the CPA.

Unless the government ignites problems with the southerners in the north, generally speaking the Sudanese in the north are not going to hamper the process if there is a referendum in the north. I doubt very much indeed that there will be a referendum in the north, in Khartoum and other places, because most of the southerners in the north are in Khartoum. What I understand is that the movement the gentleman talked about was actually by the government of southern Sudan, who wanted to bring these people to the south in order to increase the voting rate and to reach 60% of the registered people.

But with regard to the Sudanese in the north, generally speaking, I don't think they are part of the whole mechanism of obstructing the referendum, because they are out of the picture of this thing.

I hope this is a sufficient answer to this question.

On the other question regarding the southerners in the north, I think people have to know that of the half million or one million southerners in the north, probably 70% of them have no idea about the south. Quite a number of the people aged 40 to 50 years in the north were born there. They have no relation with the south. Culturally even, and linguistically, they actually became Arabic in one way or another, although they have a different religion. So my point of view is that these people have been pushed by the government of the south to go back, although there are fears that the government in the north probably might intimidate them, in case there is a referendum in the north, not to vote for a decision or something like that.

From my point of view, as I lived with these people and know them, quite a number of them have no relation with the south. If you ask them where they would vote in the south, they have no mother, no father, no house, or no place to go to there. That's why the gentleman probably said they might be on the border, because they have no land.

That's my brief answer to the question. I don't know whether it's clear or not.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

How can those people show that they have belonged to a southern tribe for four generations? How does the government expect them to provide proof of something like that?

[Elsadig Abunafeesa]

Sorry, could you repeat the question?

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

How does the government expect those people to show they have belonged to a southern tribe for four generations, seeing as how there's no civil register—and this is just my assumption—there are no archival records, and so on? How can such a claim be proven?

[Elsadig Abunafeesa]

Absolutely, that's a major thing.

I say that because it's important to know that if you meet two people from the south, one of them is more likely to be Ugandan. But you could say I'm a Nuer, I'm a Dinka, I'm a Shilluk, and so on. That's a big problem, actually, because there is no way to identify the southerners exactly, especially on the borders of these countries: Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and the Congo. These borders are not monitored. There is no exact border monitoring, and people enter here and there and move here and there. The movement in one way or another is also a problem.

So I agree with you that these people will be in a dilemma, unless the government of the south says, okay, you are southerners, come in just for political matters.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Simmons, do you have a quick response?

[Mark Simmons]

Yes, I have quick comment to make on the question of the civil registration.

Pardon me for responding in English.

I should have responded in French, but English is easier for me.

Usually the way it's done is that the community leaders will verify that a particular person or household comes from a particular place. That's the normal way it's done.

Politically speaking, there is now a desire on the part of the northern government to have as many people as possible register in the north, because it will skew the 60% and then the majority figures that follow from that, in terms of voting for the referendum. So there is some support now in the north to encourage people to claim southern citizenship and to be eligible for voting, because that will raise the number of registered voters and reduce, therefore, the percentage of voters who may be more likely to vote for independence.

Does that make sense?

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Madame Deschamps, a quick question.

No, Mr. Abunafeesa first.

[Elsadig Abunafeesa]

I have just one word to say.

Frankly speaking, the government in Sudan is actually not eager for unity. I'm telling you this very, very clearly. The government in Sudan is relaxed, even if the south separates; therefore, they are not keen to harass people to vote for unity or something like that. No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay.

Madame Deschamps.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you. I would like to go over two small matters very quickly, if the allotted time will allow me to get back to this later.

At the very end of your presentation, Mr. Dean, you said something that startled me a little. Your comment was about NGOs that are in the field and that are involved in landholding activities.

Could you tell me what their work entails? I am, of course, referring to your concern over whether the NGOs are complying with the spirit of the law. Perhaps we need to look into this.

I also have a question about what you said, Mr. Simmons. You said that an increasing number of southern residents, hailing from the north, end up returning to their roots. Given the fact that much of southern Sudan's farmland—we're talking about thousands of hectares of land—is being sold off to foreign investors, where are these people to go? These are my questions for now.

[Prof. James Dean]

Well, there is a land tenure law in southern Sudan thanks to the activities of foreign donors and of NGOs. There's an organization called Pact. Pact has been active in I'm not sure righting but certainly trying to observe whether the spirit and the law of the land tenure laws is being observed. In the south it's better than the north. My understanding is that the indigenous people are often permitted to remain on their farms after the agribusiness moves in, but they lose their major natural asset, which is their woodland, their plains, and their pastoral commons for grazing.

In contrast to the north, the government of southern Sudan is in the position to enact its own land laws, and has done so, to some extent, under the terms of the CPA., the comprehensive peace agreement. But what I hear from my friends—and this is only really what I hear and read from the reports they write in organizations like Pact, which is an NGO partially funded by CIDA—is they go out in the field and they ask, who is the agribusiness that has recently bought up all this land? Nobody knows. They say that every person they ask gives them a different answer. There is a complete lack of transparency in the south as well as in the north. So one suspects that there's money in it for the minister of agriculture and that they are wilfully overriding the spirit, at least, of the land tenure law, which is that the indigenous people should be able to carry on as before.

There's a lot of money involved. And, as I said before, it's a dilemma, because this agribusiness will be productive. On the other hand, it's mostly money for export. Now, that should trickle down to ordinary people, but it doesn't necessarily. And we have famine and food shortage, large-scale food shortage, existing side by side with large-scale agribusiness that is shipping the money out to countries with a lot of desert, in Saudi Arabia and so on. But it's not just Saudi Arabia. I think the Americans are in there--I know they are--and probably the Canadians as well. There's an enormous amount of money, with high risk, to be made from growing crops in one of the most fertile...and certainly the largest country in Africa. You see what the Egyptians have done along the Nile. The Sudanese have never taken advantage of that.

So that's the dilemma. Should we subcontract this to foreigners and put constraints on them? What do you do?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

We're going to have to switch over to Mr. Goldring, sir.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm not sure who to pose the question to, but Mr. Abunafeesa, perhaps you can help me out. There was discussion earlier and I'd like a little clarity on it.

From the notes that I have, only 80% of the border is being set going into this referendum. We were distributed a little map that detailed here traditional north-south boundaries established many, many years ago. Perhaps you can enlighten me on whether the border has been set, in particular through the oil region. I believe there are older oil fields and newer oil fields, and the capacity of the older ones may have some serious limitations to them in a very short period of time. Perhaps you could help me understand whether those may be possible border areas, if the referendum goes in a positive way. Have those oil fields been delineated well on a map so that there's no discussion on it or no confusion on where the potential border might be?

[Elsadig Abunafeesa]

Thank you.

On the question on the borders specifically, that part is still unclear. It is related to Abyei area and the other borders. The information I have is that there is a postponement. Of course the arbitration court has an opinion on that. There was supposed to be a commission for the demarcation of the border, but that commission was not able to work: one, for lack of equipment or resources; and two, there were security problems.

My understanding on the issue of the border demarcation is that there is some unspoken agreement between the government and the SPLM to leave this method and others until later. When people talk about the referendum in Abyei, it's not the Abyei town itself; it's also the rural areas where there are oil fields or oil areas, and so on. These areas are in some kind of disagreement on their borders.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Would we not be viewing this? If that's an area for future discussion, it would seem to me it's not just an area of delineating border and land circumstances; it's delineating the economy of the potential country. It's a serious aspect.

I have difficulty understanding how that could possibly be sorted out at a later date. I would think it would be something that should be thought about and delineated now, before you enter into the bigger unknown of potential outcomes.

[Elsadig Abunafeesa]

Correct. Apart from the economic side of these areas, what I know and what I hear is that there are politics. There is a lot of politics between the government and the SPLM regarding concessions to be made, especially with regard to the government and the United States. The United States is the broker between the two partners, if you like.

Probably this issue of the economic importance of this area and the demarcation of the borders is still in the basket of the political manoeuvres, if you like. That's what I understand of what's going on in that area.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

It seems to me that this goes hand in hand with some type of preliminary discussion on distribution of national debt.

There is another issue that has been talked about and touched on. It's that there is a considerable amount of aid coming into the area and into the country. How does that relate to food supply and food shortages? Are there food shortages? Are there food constrictions in various parts of the country? Is this a reality now?

If so, then you have the additional problem here with the large tracts of land that seemingly are contracted out of the country for export purposes too. Is that not going to be a source of future difficulty? Obviously if there is land available for a food product, the country people would think they are the country and they should be fed first.

Would these contracts on large tracts of land, which you've expressed are political contracts, be a point of serious contention with a future government, which may even look at reversing some of those contracts under a form of nationalizing the land and food supply for the people? Would that be a potential problem for the future?

[Elsadig Abunafeesa]

It's a small thing, actually. On the issue of the shortage of food, some Sudanese are suffering from a shortage of food, and land is sold for economic reasons for the government. In the north, also, life is very difficult, despite the fact that it's an agricultural country. Lands in Khartoum are more expensive and dearer than in New York. To buy land for a house in Khartoum is more expensive than in New York. Yes, I'm not exaggerating. You can ask. That is the first thing.

Second, the government sold quite large areas of land in agricultural areas to foreigners, from the gulf area specifically. These areas, which were made agricultural lands, became a reserve area for producing oil and other things for export. There are now six sugar factories in Sudan, but to buy a kilo of sugar in Sudan is more expensive than having it imported. The imported sugar in Sudan is cheaper than the sugar produced locally because the locally produced sugar, which is good quality, is exported. They import the lower-quality sugar, and it is cheaper in spite of that.

In poor areas like the south, for sure, there is a local problem with regard to food and shortages.