Southern Sudan: Celebrating the Peace and Contemplating the Future

 

The Conference on Southern Sudan will take place on Friday, Feb. 26 at 4:00 pm at the Quarterdeck. 

 

One of the key themes of the event is to celebrate an internationally recognized landmark agreement, known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended decades of north-south civil war in 2005. 
 

A panel will tackle both the achievements and the shortcomings of CPA in consolidating the dawn of peace for the last five years in Southern Sudan. 
 

A choir from a Sudanese Church in New Westminster, BC, and a cultural group of men and women will mark the fifth anniversary of the CPA with dances and songs about peace and home.
 

Mijok Lang, a rising Sudanese rapper and winner of an award from the city of Winnipeg for his album, “Lost in War,” will join us from Calgary to sing his popular song “Genocide.”        
 

The CPA stipulates that the people of Southern Sudan, together with the people of a disputed region of Abyei, will hold a referendum in 2011 to decide whether to secede from northern Sudan and form an independent country or remain part of the united Sudan.
 

As part of the CPA, Southern Sudan ruling party, SPLM, is contesting the forthcoming multiparty elections in April—the first in 24 years—with the hope of unseating the incumbent president, Omar Hassan Al Bashir.
 

The panel will highlight the impediments on the way to a successful referendum as well as its consequences, whether the outcome is secession or unity.