Sudanese leaders and a rebel alliance signed a peace deal on Monday following months of tortuous negotiations aimed at ending the country’s decadeslong civil wars, but other powerful armed groups have thus far declined to join them.
The deal was reached between the Sudanese government and the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), an umbrella organization of rebel groups from the western region of Darfur and the southern states of South Kordofan and the Blue Nile, and signed in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, where talks have been held since late last year.
Forging peace with rebels has been a cornerstone of Sudan's transitional government, which came to power in the months after the overthrow of longtime President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
Sudan's government, led by the head of the country's ruling transitional council Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and on the civilian side by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, says it views peace building as the cornerstone for all its endeavors. Both Burhan and Hamdok were in attendance, while South Sudanese President Salva Kiir oversaw the ceremony.
Sudan's rebels are largely drawn from non-Arab minority groups that long railed against Arab domination of the government in Khartoum.
About 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur since rebels took up arms there in 2003, according to the United Nations. Conflict in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile erupted in 2011, in the wake of South Sudan's independence, resuming two decades of war.
The agreement covers key issues around security, land ownership, transitional justice, power-sharing and the return of people who fled their homes because of fighting.
It also provides for the dismantling of rebel forces and the integration of their fighters into the national army.
Rebel members of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) had provisionally initialed the agreement with the government late Saturday.
However, an SLM faction, led by Abdelwahid Nour, and a wing of the SPLM-N headed by Abdelaziz al-Hilu refused to take part.
