Executive summary
On 3 October 2020, Sudan’s Transitional Government and representatives of several armed groups signed the ‘Juba Agreement for Peace in Sudan’ (hereinafter ‘Juba Agreement’). This Summary and Analysis paper discusses the Agreement’s
main elements, with a particular focus on the main ways in which it impacts the current and future system of government. The main points that are made in this paper can be summarized as follows:
On 3 October 2020, Sudan’s Transitional Government and representatives of several armed groups signed the ‘Juba Agreement for Peace in Sudan’ (hereinafter ‘Juba Agreement’). This Summary and Analysis paper discusses the Agreement’s
main elements, with a particular focus on the main ways in which it impacts the current and future system of government. The main points that are made in this paper can be summarized as follows:
1. The Juba Agreement amends the 2019 Constitutional Charter in a number of important ways and also predetermines much of the yet-to-be drafted permanent constitution. One of the challenges during the negotiation and drafting of the permanent constitution will be to reinforce its democratic legitimacy given that so much of its contents have already been decided by peace negotiators who do not themselves enjoy electoral legitimacy.
2. Sudan is to be established as an asymmetric federation. The future Darfur region will exercise a different set of powers to Blue Nile and Kordofan, and it is unclear what powers will be exercised by the rest of the federal regions. The Agreement contains a large amount of detail on the powers that specific regions will exercise, but is close to silent on a range of issues including but not limited to the national government’s structure, the internal structure of federal regions and the composition of revenue sharing commissions. The Agreement provides that significant additional agreements on the federal system will have to be reached in the coming few months, which will be a major challenge.
3. The Agreement includes a significant amount of detail on how the constitutional process will be organized. The Agreement provides that a conference on the system of government should take place; a timeframe, an agenda and some indication on the participants have also been determined. However, it is still unclear what the conference’s purpose will be.
4. The Agreement establishes a complex web of transitional justice mechanisms, including truth and reconciliation mechanisms, investigations and the possibility of pardons. In some cases, the Agreement appears to prioritize judicial mechanisms over reconciliation, although that is not stated explicitly.
5. The Agreement also provides for extensive transitional security arrangements, which are also not organized centrally. Each part of the country will have its own mechanisms and institutions. The Agreement provides that individual
members of armed groups should be integrated into the national security forces. The interaction between these different mechanisms will be difficult to manage. Because of the manner in which the negotiations have taken place, there is good
reason to believe that the parties will reach agreement on these outstanding issues.
The challenge, howeve, will be to negotiate a permanent constitution that delivers real benefits to the general population and that enjoys some form of democratic legitimacy while continuing to make progress on interim governance issues, all within
a reasonable timeline.
a reasonable timeline.
