Looking to the Future in Sudan

To the Editor:

Re “In Sudan, an Election and a Beginning,” by Barack Obama (Op-Ed, Jan. 9):

President Obama is right to draw attention to the need for managing refugee returns to southern Sudan and also addressing the plight of Darfurian refugees in Chad. But attention must also be paid to the far greater number of internally displaced persons, those forcibly uprooted within their own country.

More than one and a half million southern Sudanese long displaced in the north have returned to unsustainable conditions in the south. In the north, there remain at least another 1.5 million displaced southern Sudanese, and hundreds of thousands more are uprooted in the south by interethnic violence, while in Darfur, more than two million displaced persons have been languishing in destitute camps since 2004. One of the reasons for this oversight is that there is no clearly defined senior focal point in the United States government for those internally displaced — not in the State Department, the United States Mission to the United Nations or the Agency for International Development.

A 2004 internally displaced persons policy of the United States aid agency is unknown to most of the government and is not uniformly applied. With all the Obama administration’s reorganization of humanitarian and development offices, it is time to ensure that the 27 million internally displaced persons in the world uprooted by conflict and human rights abuse receive their fair share of attention.

Roberta Cohen
Washington, Jan. 10, 2011

The writer was co-director of the Brookings Institution Project on Internal Displacement.

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To the Editor:

“Southern Sudan Votes” (editorial, Jan. 8) rightly notes that the government of southern Sudan has “set up more than two dozen ministries and built schools and roads” since the signing of the comprehensive peace agreement in 2005.

Another important “peace dividend” being realized is that southern Sudan has reduced its cases of Guinea worm disease by 92 percent, to about 1,700 cases in 2010 from more than 20,000 cases in 2006.

The focus of a global eradication campaign that has reduced the number of cases by more than 99 percent since 1986, Guinea worm disease is manifest by three-foot-long worms emerging through the skin over several weeks.

It is transmitted by drinking contaminated water, but can be prevented by educating people to filter their water through a cloth and by providing clean sources of drinking water. There is no vaccine and no curative treatment.

With 95 percent of all cases in the world, southern Sudan is now the key to completing the global campaign by 2012, and most cases of Guinea worm are now focused in only six of its 80 counties. This accomplishment has improved health, agricultural productivity and school attendance for thousands of southern Sudanese while training almost 30,000 Sudanese health workers and volunteers, despite handicaps of a vast landscape, poor infrastructure, a long rainy season, sporadic insecurity and exceptional mobility of rural populations among villages, farms and cattle camps.

This achievement against such great odds also shows what southern Sudanese can do when they have peace, and it is a good foundation for improving health services in the future.

Donald R. Hopkins
Atlanta, Jan. 11, 2011

The writer, a pediatrician, is vice president for health programs, Carter Center.

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To the Editor:

Your editorial “Southern Sudan Votes” noted the importance of oil in the independence referendum in southern Sudan. Oil is not the only natural resource whose management will be critical to the fate of the new nation.

Southern Sudan boasts vast tracts of savannas, wetlands and woodlands that play host to some of the most spectacular and important wildlife populations in Africa and the world’s second-largest wildlife migration — of some 1.3 million antelope. These resources could become one of the greatest tourism attractions in Africa and a key component of South Sudan’s growth and economic security.

There is an unprecedented opportunity now for wildlife conservation, sustainable natural resource management and environmentally friendly ecotourism to be integrated into one nation-building process.

Steven Sanderson
President and Chief Executive
Wildlife Conservation Society
Bronx, Jan. 8, 2011