The State of Sudan

       Since the end of our movie in 2003, Sudan has undergone several changes. In 2003 and 2004, the government and rebel forces in southern Sudan made considerable progress towards peace. In 2005, they signed the Nairobi Comprehensive Peace Agreement, granting southern Sudan autonomy for 6 years. After six years, they agreed to have a referendum about Southern independence. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement created a co-vice president position and splits Sudan’s oil deposits equally between the North and South. Recently however, the Janjaweed militia and rebel groups like the Sudan People's Liberation Army, Sundanese Liberation Army(SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement have fought each other in the form of guerilla warfare in the Darfur, Red Sea and Equatoria regions. This violence has also strained relations between Sudan and Chad, which exploded in 2005 but calmed down again in 2007. The death toll from this violence has reached 200,000 and has displaced 2.5 million people. The referendum has just been voted on, with about 99 percent of the population voting for southern succession. The representative of Southern Sudan has urged the NPC and SPLM, the northern and southern based political parties, to allow Southern Sudan to have independence peacefully.
            The leader of Sudan is President Omar al-Bashir, who seized power in a coup in 1989. Al-Bashir instated Sharia law in Northern Sudan and used the military to eliminate all other parties, so Sudan is a one party system now. In 2009, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir, stating that he implemented a plan to destroy the three main ethnic groups in Darfur (the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa) using rape, murder and deportation. He is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and all the charges but genocide stuck. NATO, Amnesty International and the Genocide Intervention Network support the arrest warrant, but Sudan refuses to comply. Sudan claims it does not have to bring in al-Bashir because it is not a state party to the Rome Statute, but a UN Security Council Resolution has stated that Sudan does. Many members of the African Union and the Arab League do not agree with the arrest warrant, allowing him to land in their countries without being arrested. The ICC prosecutor Luise Marino-Ocampo has come up with an idea to possibly avoid confrontations with the African Union and still arrest al-Bashir by intercepting his plane in international airspace.