July 13th, 2008 - Nikki Serapio  Permalink  View & Add Comments

Restarting the Darfur peace process

Djibril Bassolé, Burkina Faso’s Foreign Minister, was recently appointed as the new UN-AU Chief Mediator for Darfur. Needless to say, he has an immensely difficult task ahead of him. He must try to drive forward a peace process that has so far failed the people of Darfur.

A recent memo from the ENOUGH Project and the Save Darfur Coalition makes it clear that there are concrete solutions for effectively restarting the Darfur peace process. The memo excerpt below specifies some key things that need to happen over the next few months:

–
Since the conflict began in early 2003, we have among us made 10 research trips to the war zone. In our travels, we have found only one group of people who have consistently articulated workable solutions to the challenges facing Darfur: the internally displaced and refugee populations. The voice of the Darfurian diaspora is also emerging. The people of Darfur have strong views about what issues need to be addressed, and how. However, Darfurians have been conspicuously absent from peace efforts, helping explain why we have seen such limited progress. You will only succeed in your endeavors if you listen to them, and it is their voices that will ultimately make any peace process sustainable.

As you undertake consultations with Darfurians, you will find that several persistent themes emerge:

- The need to share power and wealth more equitably in order to end historic marginalization, including direct efforts to increase representation of traditionally marginalized groups in government
- The need to decentralize political and fiscal decision making
- The need for victims of violence to receive adequate individual compensation and restitution of stolen property
- The need for those driven from their homes to be able to return to their land safely and in dignity, with the establishment of practical land ownership and rights policies that will encourage such returns
- The need to dismantle the structures of violence—in particular the Janjaweed militias—that have torn Darfur to pieces
- The need to establish practical mechanisms for promoting reconstruction that will include local representatives,the government, and the international community

The issues on the table in Darfur are complex, with deep disparities between the positions of the government and the rebel groups. Rather than relying solely on the warring parties to come up with their own proposals, you and your team should author a draft agreement that begins to bridge the gaps by consulting with and incorporating the perspectives of a much broader array of stakeholders, particularly the civilian victims of the conflict.

A draft agreement that lays out a clearly defined vision for an end state that resonates with Darfur’s civilian population would break the pattern of previous rounds of negotiations, in which the government and rebel groups exploited the lack of vision and stuck to intransigent positions. The people of Darfur continue to pay the price for this failure, and, for their sake, you must seize the opportunity to chart a new course.

The bottom line is this: There are solutions to the crisis in Darfur, and Darfurians should be at the center of those solutions.