Carter Center to Meet with Key Sudan Stakeholders to Discuss Peace

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dec. 7, 2016
Contact: Soyia Ellison, [email protected]             

بالعربية

KHARTOUM, SUDAN — The Carter Center, the impartial non-governmental organization founded and led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, plans to hold three meetings in the coming days with a group of international experts and key Sudanese stakeholders to discuss possibilities for peace in Sudan.

The meetings are not part of the official mediation that the African Union is conducting, but rather supplemental, exploratory gatherings designed to begin to identify points of common ground among all key Sudanese parties. 

The Carter Center team met today with government officials representing the Office of the President, the National Assembly, the Sudan Armed Forces, the National Intelligence Service, the National Dialogue, and others.

Later in the week, the team will meet with representatives of Sudanese groups advocating for the interests of women, youth, traditional communities, and the poor. It will also meet with armed and political opposition actors. The Center is prepared to meet with all Sudanese stakeholders.

“The Carter Center has a long history in Sudan and is invested in its success,” said Jordan Ryan, vice president of the Center’s peace programs and a participant in the meetings. “We want to do whatever we can to help bring peace to its people, and we think facilitating meetings like this is a small way we can contribute to the peace process. This week’s meetings are exploratory, but we hope they will be the first in a series.”

The international experts assembled by The Carter Center all have dealt with strife in their home countries and plan to share with the Sudanese some of their experiences in working to resolve a variety of controversial issues.

The experts are:

• Roelf Petrus Meyer of South Africa, a former Minister of Defense and the South African government’s chief negotiator with the African National Congress.
• Monica McWilliams of Ireland, co-founder of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition political party and later a delegate to Ireland’s Multi-Party Peace Negotiations.
• Amine Ghali of Tunisia, Who after Tunisia’s revolution served as a member of the National Commission to Investigate Corruption and the National Commission on the Transitional Justice Debate.
• Karim Thabet of Yemen, former project manager for the United Nations Development Program’s Yemen Integrated Social Cohesion and Development Project.
• Miriam Coronel Ferrer of the Philippines, former chairperson of the Peace Panel of the government of the Philippines in the negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The Carter Center in Sudan

The Carter Center, an impartial and non-partisan, non-governmental organization, has worked in Sudan since the late 1980s, as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter worked directly to negotiate between the parties and support the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

Milestones include negotiation of the 1995 "Guinea worm cease-fire," which gave international health workers almost six months of relative peace to enter areas of Sudan previously inaccessible due to fighting, and the 1999 Nairobi Agreement between Sudan and Uganda, in which the governments pledged to stop supporting rebels acting against each other's governments.

The Carter Center also observed elections in Sudan in 2010 and the referendum on independence for South Sudan in 2011.

In addition, it helped eradicate Guinea worm from the country and is working to eliminate river blindness and control trachoma.

Translation

مركز كارتر يتهيّأ للإجتماع مع الجهات المعنية الرئيسية لبحث عملية السلام فى السودان

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"Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope."
A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide.