Sudan's Humanitarian Disaster
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200506000410 |
| Author | Robert O. Matthews |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Robert O. Matthews
Sudan’s humanitarian
disaster
Will Canada live up to its responsibility to protect?
| International Journal | Autumn 2005 | 1049 |
As a country deeply divided along ethnic and religious lines the Sudan had
already experienced large-scale violence before its independence. The Torit
mutiny of 1955, the accompanying massacres in Equatoria province, and
the government’s brutal reprisals set the stage for what was to follow.
Hostilities between northerners and southerners quickly escalated into a
full-scale civil war that has lasted almost four decades. The unfulfilled
promises of the Addis Ababa agreement (1972) only served to exacerbate
the violence when it erupted again in 1983. Since then, civil war and the
related famines and diseases have consumed one million lives, displaced
more than four million people, and denuded the war zone of all health, edu-
cational, and other social services. With the extension of the war to the
north, first to the Nuba Mountains, then to the southern Blue Nile, the east-
ern region, and finally to Darfur, Sudan has become a humanitarian disas-
ter of epic proportions.1
Robert O. Matthews is professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. The author would
like to thank Barry Parkinson for his willingness to answer with patience and insight every
conceivable question on Canada’s relations with the Sudan, and Elisabeth King, Renwick
Matthews, Cranford Pratt, and Ian Spears for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.
1 See Taisier M. Ali and Robert O. Matthews, “Civil war and failed peace efforts in Sudan,” in
Taisier M. Ali and Robert O. Matthews, eds.,
Civil Wars in Africa
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 1999).
| RobertO. Matthews |
| 1050 | International Journal | Autumn 2005 |
What involvement Canada had in the Sudan until 1998 was largely
inspired by humanitarian concerns.2Trade between the two countries was
and still is virtually nonexistent, and the Canadian private sector had shown
little or no interest in Sudan. As a non-core country in Canada’s aid pro-
gram, Sudan received hardly any assistance from CIDA in the 1970s.
Beginning in 1982-83 aid to Sudan jumped to more than $20 million and
stayed at or near that level for almost a decade. Since 1992, when Canada
suspended government-to-government bilateral aid to Sudan in response to
its human rights record, and throughout most of the 1990s, CIDA contin-
ued to contribute humanitarian relief, though at a reduced level of roughly
$10 million annually. This aid was mainly in the form of food aid, medical
supplies, seeds, and tools, and was channelled through United Nations
agencies and NGOs operating under the umbrella of Operation Lifeline
Sudan as well as through the International Committee of the Red Cross.
It was thus in response to the prolonged drought of the 1980s, the re-
emerging civil war after 1983, and the escalation of human rights abuses
after the National Islamic Front seized power in 1989 that Canada slowly
became more involved in Sudan’s affairs, extending humanitarian assis-
tance, expressing our opposition to human rights violations by Khartoum
through the United Nations, and encouraging and supporting the peace
process launched by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development
(IGAD) in 1993-94. As Lloyd Axworthy, then Canada’s foreign minister,
said in 1999, “Canada’s commitment to human security, particularly the
protection of civilians in armed conflict, provides the basis for its involve-
ment in Sudan.”3With so few interests there, Canada had no reason to
establish a diplomatic mission in Khartoum, at least not until 2000. Any
consular or diplomatic concerns were handled from Cairo until 1986 and,
since then, from Addis Ababa.
Talisman’s announcement in August 1998 of its friendly takeover of
Arakis Energy’s 25 percent interest in the Sudan’s Greater Nile Petroleum
Operating Company (GNPOC) changed all that. Within a year Talisman’s
operation in the Sudan had become a public relations disaster, both for the
2 For the earlier part of this article I have drawn heavily on my chapter “Canadian corporate
responsibility in Sudan: Why Canada backed down,” in John J. Kirton and Michael J. Trebilcock,
eds.,
Hard Choices, Soft Law
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 228-49.
3 Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade,press release no. 232, 26 October 1999.
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