Sudan 's Experience with IGAD's Early Warning Mechanism

Mohammed Ahmed Abdelghaffar

IGAD's early warning mechanism made its debut in the Sudan . The Khartoum Declaration of November 23, 2000, that concluded the 8^th IGAD summit called for the preparation of a draft protocol on the establishment of the Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism (CEWARN) on issues pertaining to peace and security. The IGAD's 9^th summit held for the second consecutive time in Khartoum in January 2002 was the occasion of the signature of the protocol that established formally the CEWARN mechanism.

Before discussing the IGAD's early warning mechanism and its application in Sudan , a few historical considerations to situate the process leading to the CEWARN mechanism could prove useful. IGAD is in fact the successor of the former Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD), which was created in 1986 by six states - Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Djibouti[i]-, and inherited from its approach to the problems of the region.

In the past decades, the Horn of Africa region has suffered from an extreme wave of drought and desertification leading to great human tragedies. This region and its neighbors experienced severe famine, displacement and death during an extended period between the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s. Drought and desertification were not the only reasons for displacement; political crises and wars were also raging. The Ogaden war in the second half of the 1970s, the tensions in Somalia at the end of the 1980s, and the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea were major causes of chaos and instability.

The immense tragedy resulting from this combination of natural disasters and man-made crises attracted the world attention. Western states with a colonial past in the region were willing to assist. They were willing to address the humanitarian situation, but wanted also to deal with the underlying causes of the conflicts.

Western states, and in particular some European states, had vested interests in the region and the European Community was keen to initiate development projects. One of these projects was the ambitious plan to connect the states of the continent by a road crossing the continent from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, and crisscrossing the axe that linked the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and the South African Cape Town. Discussion about the project had started about half a century ago without materializing.

This led eight Western states to call on the states of the horn of Africa to establish a regional organization with the triple aim of co-coordinating humanitarian assistance in famine affected areas, setting up means of combating drought and desertification, and resettling the refugees and the displaced. These states were Sweden , Norway , Holland , Italy , France , Britain , U.S.A. , and Canada .

In January 1986 the then six states of the region welcomed the principle of the association and an inaugural meeting was convened in Djibouti which founded officially the IGADD. That was the beginning of the first intergovernmental association to combat drought and desertification. The Western states called themselves “friends of the association”.

When the situation improved in the early 1990s, IGAD friends decided that the time was ripe for adding to the humanitarian assistance a new basket of infrastructural development projects. This necessitated a revision of the statutes of the association. While the acronym of the association remained quasi unchanged – the Inter Governmental Association for Development (IGAD) -, the status of IGAD “friends” was upgraded. They appeared this time as “partners” of the association in order to reflect the new role they intended to assume in the region. The current IGAD association was established in this new form in 1994.

IGAD and Conflict Resolution

The principle that stability paves the way to development - and vice versa – is well established. The new philosophy on which IGAD rested assumed that an exclusive focus on humanitarian assistance is detrimental to development as it leads inevitably to dependence; hence IGAD favored to proceed in parallel, at a similar pace, with development and humanitarian assistance. From its inception, the consensus was that the progressive removal of reasons for regional conflicts was the main precondition of future infrastructural projects connecting the states in the region.

Conflicts can emerge from a variety of reasons. International conflicts are often related to ideology or borders, or both; international conflicts can also originate from non-governmental factors such as cross border tribal conflicts. Usually, tribal disputes are related with the degradation of the environment and the scarcity of resources. A violent culture and armed robberies affecting transnational tribes may also trigger larger-scale conflicts between governments.

IGAD has promoted actively stability and development by attempts at resolving conflicts between governments. Since its inception in 1994, IGAD sought also to mediate in the southern Sudan conflict through its Declaration of Principle initiative in 1995. Both the government and the SPLM have responded to this Declaration in 1997 and negotiations started under a quadripartite committee chaired by Kenya; these negotiations took a serious turn in 2002, with the signing of a first protocol of agreement, and led gradually to the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. IGAD has also been actively involved in searching for solutions in the internal conflict in Somalia .

It may be by accident - or for more profound reasons – that IGAD has assumed a mediating role in internal conflict in the region. Indeed this role that surfaced in 1994 coincided with the project of the Agenda for Peace or, in other words, the “preventive diplomacy” advocated by UN Secretary General Butros Ghali. The Agenda for Peace doctrine was first formulated in a 1992 UN Summit ; the heated debates that followed that Summit led to a new formulation in 1995. Serious troubles affected the region during the years 1993 and 1994.   Somalia became the theater of the first international intervention on humanitarian basis and triggered a methodological controversy between UN Secretary General (Butros Ghali) and the USA (Madeleine Albright, USA permanent representative at the UN General Assembly).

Early Warning Mechanism of IGAD

The idea of establishing the early warning mechanism of IGAD seems to have emerged in 1998. IGAD was seriously lacking an instrument through which it could initiate consultations, negotiations, and follow-up to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts. There was no mechanism to coordinate a regional response when facing humanitarian situations which, inevitably, affect neighboring states.

The initial project was to create a standardized mechanism enabling to reach all administrative levels of the member states of the region, dilute the over-centralized principle of decision-making, and strengthen the capacity of individuals and institutions with correlative accompanying programs of human resources development.

Focusing on violent conflicts, three features became central in the mechanism conceived:

·        Setting-up an early warning system;

·        Developing a decision-making process on the basis of know-how;

·        Formulating effective response to face violent conflicts.

Nomads are a main actor in cross border conflicts. The very nature of the nomadic life-style requires constant movement following the seasonal availability of water and grazing pastures, regardless of administrative and international borders. This mobility presupposes good and harmonious relations with resident populations and other nomad communities. It should be added that pastoralism is an important of factor of the wealth of the region and a key to the economy of rural communities.

Nomadic life conditions have been dramatically negatively affected in the last three decades. Among the most critical factors for the steady deterioration that we have witnessed in the past decades are wars, drought and desertification, modern development projects, new understanding of administrative borders, and social change. Correlated closely with this pattern, three types of conflicts involving pastoralist communities have constantly increased: conflicts between nomads and farmers communities, conflicts between nomads across borders, and conflict with state authorities.

The phenomenon of violent pastoralist conflict in the region is not new. It started when colonial authorities allowed the private acquisition of large plots of land using a private property scheme. This had led in Uganda , for instance, to major conflicts between nomads and the state when the latter sought to control these lands. As the state increasingly adopted a repressive policy, the pastoralist communities were driven to marginal areas or resorted to criminality as a mean to survive. Nomads acquired firearms that they use in cattle raids or to protect themselves against the state security services.

In northern Kenya colonial decisions over the administrative division of the territory and international borders did not take into account the local social systems and the specific needs of pastoralist communities. This had serious consequences. In addition to arbitrary borders which cut across tribes and were insensible to the land use customs, the living conditions of the nomadic tribes deteriorated rapidly as a result of ecological and developmental changes.

Robbery became increasingly organized and structured around so-called “warlords”. The phenomenon flourished in the border triangle between Kenya , Sudan and Uganda . Robbery spread into the area of Torkana and Karamong in Uganda , and Tabasa on Sudan 's border.

At the Kenyan-Ethiopian border, frequent rebel activity could be observed and this led to the speculation that the Oromo liberation front was using Kenya as sanctuary. Consequently, the Ethiopian military crossed the Kenyan border many times searching for rebels. These incursions strained the relations with Kenya .

The Ethiopian-Somali border became also the theater of conflicts between nomadic Somali fractions over water resources and grazing pasture in the Ogaden region. The conflict was exacerbated by the involvement of outside political forces using the situation to propagate the idea of a Greater Somalia. The result was the Ogaden war of 1977-1978; conflicts between nomads have persisted ever since.

A common feature of these conflict areas is the lack of road infrastructure. Communication is poor. The capacity of the state authorities to assert themselves in these regions is often deficient and the provision of law and order services is quasi absent. Furthermore, social services such as education, health, and veterinary services have consistently deteriorated over time, leading local communities to resent the absence of the state and their social and economical marginalization.

To tackle these issues is clearly a challenge for the states of the region. They run the risk to be responsive only in time of violent conflict, while they prove unable to address in the long run the underlying issues which triggered in the first place the conflicts.

The overall approach of the IGAD early warning mechanism is to seek the help of civil society organizations, tribal elders, religious leader, the youth and the women in the establishment of more formal conflict settlement arrangements in international borders areas. This philosophy built on the experience that local information and understanding of conflict dynamic exist; the information is available at the local level. The cardinal issue was therefore to create a mechanism that allows this information to reach the authorities and to develop an instrument of co-ordination between these groups and the formal authorities for problem-solving.

Of course, the challenge is not just to create a co-ordination mechanism. An EWS would serve its function only if it is able to help addressing the more structural factors of pastoralist conflicts, such as the revision of administrative frameworks, the establishment of development schemes or the formulation of encompassing policies in pastoralist areas.

While there is a considerable wealth of experience with natural disasters early warning systems, this is not the case with conflict early warning systems. This lack of previous experience is considered as the most critical single challenge faced by the early warning mechanism established by the 2002 Khartoum protocol.

Specialists have tried to develop early warning systems based on models of civil conflicts and the identification of factors leading to armed conflicts. Their predictions were verified in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993 and in Rwanda in 1994. They were based on highly complicated intelligence networks and NGOs working in the areas vulnerable to human catastrophe.

What is needed in a EWS is not just information on the cause and process of conflict escalation. A preventive EWS required an understanding on what kind of measure can lead to rapid de-escalation and long-term problem-solving.

It seems also quite critical that the early warning mechanism operate with some level of independence from the state intelligence services as states might have vested interests in the crisis itself. This leads to the intricate question: Can states, regardless of their own interest, recruit resources and formal organs to provide the information that EWS need?

Experience tells that small events, isolated incidents, have the potential to trigger larger ones. With this in mind, experts in early warning have created systems using a large number of indicators that allow them to decipher hidden information in events and identify patterns leading to major conflicts.

Among these indicators, we can name “securing food”, “guaranteeing jobs and income”, “human rights violations”, “ethnic and religious troubles”, “inequality” and “military activity”. These indicators are regrouped into larger categories of variable. For instance, there are indicators related to structural troubles and social inequality. Others relate to demography, such as the size, composition and distribution of the population. Others are indicators of economic development. Others belong to the category of food availability and the environment. Still others are related to the issue of the legitimacy of the regime. Some indicators allow measuring the level of coercion and of media freedoms. Others measure the degree of external threats. The system incorporates also historical indicators that are believed to be relevant in predicting the future.

It should be stressed that not all indicators are “government related”. There are indicators that allow to measure civil strife with no direct involvement of the state. These conflicts, of course, have repercussions on the state as they may lead eventually to a state collapse. If the government is an actor in the conflict, the early warning system treats the government response in a dichotomous way, either as negotiating or suppressing the rebel movement. If the government is not involved directly, the EWS systems analyze its role as mediator in the conflict.

The challenge facing IGAD's specific early warning system mechanism is that is that its main focus – pastoralist conflicts – is a typical case where the state is not involved directly, but only indirectly. At one point of time, the conflict will escalate to the point where the state will have no choice but to be involved. Another interesting issue of the conflict early warning system of IGAD is that information from other natural and environmental disasters early warning mechanisms are relevant only at a very early stage of a model for conflict. The information from these natural catastrophe systems has often little relevance to the analysis of the immediate conflict dynamic.

Pastoralist conflicts are therefore a very specific issue with unusual features that required IGAD experts to develop more or less a sui generi analytic framework. That was the most critical challenge that IGAD faced when it needed to develop its analytic instrument.

Currently, IGAD's early warning mechanism faces new, down-to-earth challenges: it needs to set-up clear, specific and long-term strategies that will allow achieving the objectives for which the mechanism was established in the first place. In this respect the protocol needs to be revised to allow the extension of the application of the mechanism to other areas than the first pilot project so as to include the Sudanese-Kenyan-Ugandan border triangle and the Ethiopian-Eritrean border area.  

The extension of the mandate of CEWARN is a political issue and will require transparent discussions. It should become a key component of the strategy for the next five years.

Sudan 's Experience with IGAD's Early Warning Mechanism

The IGAD early warning mechanism – the CEWARN – is formally called a programme. The Assembly of Heads of State and Government, which is the IGAD supreme body and the Council of Ministers, which is composed of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and one other Focal Minister designated by each member state, supervise the mechanism. The Committee of Ambassadors, which is comprised of IGAD member states' Ambassadors or Plenipotentiaries accredited to the country of IGAD Headquarters, advises and guides the Executive Secretary of IGAD.

At the CEWARN operational level, the Committee of Permanent Secretaries (CPS), composed by undersecretaries of the member states, is formally responsible for political decisions on CEWARN and works closely with the IGAD Secretariat (see diagramme below)[ii]. At operational level, a CEWARN unit has been instituted and tasked with the co-ordination and supervision of the national units or CEWERUs. In the CEWARN unit, all seven member states are represented. This Unit facilitates the exchanges of information and builds capacity of the national CEWERUs.

The third level of the mechanism is composed by the seven national CEWERUs.

The CPS meets twice a year and submit its reports directly to the Council of Ministers. The Technical Committee– constituted by the respective Heads of national units of the member states in addition to a representative of civil society institutions and a representative of a research center – meets twice a year and report directly to the CPS.

The function of the Council of Ministers is to exchange information on conflicts and early warning and to insure that the Heads of States and Governments are informed appropriately.

The function of the Technical Committee is to promote co-operation between national mechanisms and insure communication with the IGAD secretariat. It also validates the information and the reports of the advisory bodies. The Committee of Ambassadors to IGAD in Djibouti also fulfills follow-up and co-ordination functions between their government and IGAD.

The CEWARN has no supranational authority. It operates within strict terms of reference, which can be summarized as follows:

·        It does not deal with conflicts between member states, especially conflicts of governmental nature. Such conflicts are referred to IGAD directly;

·        It does not deal with civil conflict between government and rebel groups supported by governments across the borders;

·        It is only concerned with the provision of early warning and information that enable governments to prevent pastoralist conflicts where governments are not party to the conflict from escalating.

·        It does not intervene to prevent and solve conflicts; it only provides precise verified information to the states concerned in order to enable them to take measures for preventing the conflict.

Currently, Sudan has established national unit (CEWERU) of early warning and response and a focal point at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Two workshop organized by the Khartoum mechanism were held in the Sudan . The first in August 2003 with the aim of providing information of the interested Sudanese circles about the initiation of the mechanism and the role required by them; the second in August 2004 to launch the national mechanism of early warning through a meeting with the steering committee and be acquainted with to its logistics needs for the purpose of providing them. Since the inception of the regional mechanism of early warning, the CPS and the early warning Technical Committee held four regional meetings, the latest in date being a meeting in June 2005 in Nairobi .

A series of meetings were held at the level of the Steering Committee of the CEWERU to elaborate the precise terms of reference requested by the mechanism for the local level of the mechanism. The Steering Committee in Sudan was formed in August 2004. Representatives of the Sudanese national government were nominated for the Technical Committee and the CPS and have therefore been able to participate to the work of these bodies.

Sudan has experienced a number of practical and logistical difficulties in the implementation of CEWARN at national level:

·        The pilot area of Karamoja includes a large portion of the Sudan territory. The CEWARN mechanism is operational in the Ethiopian-Kenyan and the Kenyan-Ugandan borders. It is not operational however on the side of the Sudanese-Ethiopian, Sudanese-Kenyan, and Sudanese-Ugandan border in the Karamoja zone due to the war in Southern Sudan .[iii]. While the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in January 2005 has stabilized the situation on the Sudanese side of Karamoja cluster, the implementation of the mechanism still faces two challenges on the Sudanese side:

The first challenge is to design successful linkages between the committee for demobilization, disarmament and reintegration of ex-combatants (DDR) and the CEWERU local committees as well as the national steering committees working with in the national early warning units. Linkages need also to be made between research institutions and civil society organizations. Concretely, this means that the national committee of DDR - in which the National Congress, SPLM and UN are represented - should provide the information required on the Sudanese side of the Karamoja cluster; they have the resources to do this job and should pass the information to the early warning local committees and eventually to the research institutions and the civil society organizations which deal with the regional mechanism of IGAD through the focal point of the CPS.

The second challenge relates to the rebel activities of the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in southern Sudan . The Government of National Unity and the Government of Southern Sudan work in close co-ordination with the Ugandan government to drive these forces outside the Sudanese territory. This is considered a delicate situation. In principle, the Technical Committee of early warning is not allowed to pass any information on the LRA as the CEWARN mechanism applies currently only to pastoralist conflicts; at the same time, the LRA operates without support of any state of the region and, in this sense, the protocol of CEWARN would perfectly apply to this movement if the regional mechanism were to be extended to cover other conflicts as well.

·        Currently, the national CEWERU in Sudan lacks the appropriate financial means to run its operations. When the CEWERU was established in August 2004 in Sudan , it was decided that the University of Juba Peace and Development Studies Center would function as the research center tasked with the reception of information, its analysis and the submission of reports to the national CEWERU. The national Steering Committee needed to have an official headquarter and be able to coordinate with the other institutions of the mechanism. Representative of civil society organizations had been appointed in the Steering Committee together with the head of the research center and the head of technical committee for early warning. However, it is quite obvious that without a budget the CEWERU institutions cannot function properly. They need human resources, premises and financial means to operate at both national and local level. IGAD's regional mechanism for early warning is currently dependent on donations from Western states, either directly or through NGOs, to cover the expenses of meetings, workshops accommodation and travel expense of participants. These donations are also used in financing researches and study projects implemented by consultancies. Using available resources, the regional mechanism has provided some equipment to the Sudanese CEWERU. However, the delay in obtaining premises for its headquarters has affected negatively the implementation of the mechanism in Sudan . Except for what is obtained through the regional coordination unit of CEWARN (logistic, travel and accommodation for participants in meetings), there are no substantial financial resources made available to the national committee and the local committees in Sudan . There is a need to obtain resources for the premises as well as the running cost of the mechanism.

·        Another point is the issue of information and its flow (see text box) and the issue of transparency. The information circulate vertically at the levels of the organs and units from sub-national to the national and eventually the regional level to activate the early warning process and trigger an appropriate response. This requires transparency in dealing with information. The issue of transparency is in fact quite delicate. There is a widespread belief that a hidden agenda is at work. Many of the actors who detain information refrain from passing it due to their concerns over the circles that may utilize them for what is viewed as an hostile action.

This is true for instance in the case of Sudan , in its eastern and western region. In a context of feverish activity of some organizations and international double standards, institutions with information in Sudan are particularly careful with passing information that nobody knows where it ends.

The issue of transparency is particularly salient when it comes to passing information to the regional level of the mechanism in local conflicts as other states may then access to that information. This is one of the main obstacles that impacted negatively until now on the implementation of the mechanism in Sudan , from its the research aspects to the financial questions.

Considering the prospect of an extension of the application of the mechanism beyond the current pilot areas (Karamoja, Turkana and Somalia ), so for instance to the Sudanese-Ethiopian and Sudanese-Eritrean borders, it should be stressed here that there are no pastoralist conflicts in these areas. As far as other conflicts are concerned, Sudan may prefer to deal with the issues on a bilateral basis. Similarly, given that the governments are the main players in the tensions between Somalia and Eritrea , this conflict lies outside the realm of application of CEWARN. The main precondition for an exchange of information, coordination and cooperation is the existence of good relationship between two neighboring states; in the absence of such relationship it is difficult to see how transparent and reliable information can be exchanged.

Following this reasoning, the responsibility of establishing and developing better relations between member states lies in the IGAD itself at the highest level, not in the CEWARN.

Consolidating, enabling and activating civil society organizations and community-based organizations strengthen the capacity of Sudan to deal with its own conflicts. In other words, there is a need for a national mechanism of EWS with linkages to smaller early warning units to deal with local authorities and provide timely and appropriate responses.

·        Finally, the issue of response is a major challenge faced by the early warning process, not just at the regional level but also the national and local sub-national levels. This is a missing link. Until today, no decision has been taken with regard to the process of coordination of the response to a crisis at all level of the mechanism. Similarly, the reaction process to an alarm between CEWARN and the Head of States and Governments of IGAD has never been defined.

Conclusion

IGAD's regional mechanism for early warning has not just been born in Sudan ; a number of the best Sudanese professionals officiate in its leading organs. Sudan has a responsibility to support the mechanism, take initiatives to strengthen and activate the organization, and suggest an enlargement of its application in the border areas. Sudan special circumstances, with a diversity of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, are a comparative advantage. The majority of its population is made out of rural communities living with pastoral tribes. Sudan has an important geopolitical position recognized by a number of neighboring countries.

Sudan has benefited from the good offices of the African Union to help solving conflicts with some neighboring countries. It has benefited from the mediation of IGAD to solve an internal conflict.  Now, it is the turn of Sudan to facilitate the issue of conflict resolution between pastoralist and farmers communities at the level of the regional mechanism for early warning.

The various methods adopted in conflict resolution have provided Sudan with an experience that qualifies it for that role.

About the author

Mohamed Abdelghaffar received his MA (1990) and PhD (1996) in International Law from the University of Alhassan in Casablanca . He started his career as professional diplomat in 1971 if the Foreign Office of Sudan. He served in seven countries, five of which as diplomat and two as Ambassador, in Romania, Uganda, Belgium, Nigeria, Morocco, Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire) and Algeria. In the headquarters, he was Director of the African Department, then Director of Planning and Information and recently Director General of Global Issues. From 2004, he serves as Head of CEWERU, the Conflict early warning and early response unit of Sudan .

For quotation, refer to this article as follows:

Mohammed Ahmed Abdelghaffar, Sudan's Exeprience with IGAD's Early Warning Mechanism, in An Early Warning System for Sudan, edited by Dominique Wisler and Eltayeb Haj Ateya, Khartoum, Coginta, 2007

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