You hit the nail on the head. It's an excellent question. Part of the problem is that there hasn't been a leader within the international community in developing policy in Sudan. After the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, many people assumed that the UN would take the lead. They set up a 10,000-person peacekeeping mission, and other bilateral actors who had previously had the lead in the peace process took a step back. The U.S., Norway, the U.K., and other international partners ceded some of the political direction to the UN mission. What happened was that the UN mission became sidetracked with the conflict in Darfur and failed to provide an adequate balance.
With the deployment of UNAMID in Darfur, we have two separate missions. The UN mandate has been bifurcated. UNMIS, the UN mission in Sudan, has a mandate for monitoring the North-South Peace Agreement exclusively, and UNAMID has a mandate for monitoring Darfur exclusively. So we can't rely on the UN to provide national leadership because they've taken themselves out of the game.
I think we have to look at other places, at other countries that have not traditionally been leaders in Sudan. This brings me to the point I made about Canada's having an opportunity to play that role. We have been heavily involved in Sudan in supporting humanitarian activities in Darfur, under the African Union and UNAMID. But we haven't been leaders in the political process. So there's a gap right now. No one is leading in the political process in the international community. The traditional countries—the U.S., Norway, and the U.K.—have not stepped up to fill the vacuum. I think Canada is well placed to push the process forward, to develop the necessary coordination and consensus.
There are efforts. There was a meeting in December that Italy hosted, a preparatory meeting, through the framework of the IGAD Partners Forum, which was the international support body for the north-south peace process. That meeting could be revived, and I think it's a forum that Canada could easily take the lead in.