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Catholic World News News Feature

Formal pact ends Sudan's civil war January 10, 2005

After more than 21 years of civil war, the government of Sudan has reached a comprehensive peace agreement with rebels of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA). The agreement, signed on January 9 in Nairobi, Kenya, ends the fighting that has caused over 2 million deaths in southern Sudan. A second bloody conflict continues in the western province of Darfur.

Sudanese refugees living in Kenya-- some of the millions of people displaced by the war-- dances in the streets of Nairobi as the formal peace pact was signed. John Garang, the SPLA leder, inked the accord along with Ali Osma Taha, the vice-president of the Khartoum government.

"We welcome this long waited peace agreement," said the Cardinal Gabriel Zubeir Wako, the first Sudanese prelate ever elevated to the College of Cardinals. "God had not forgotten Sudan."

The peace agreement includes eight protocols, calling for a permanent ceasefire, setting out power-sharing arrangements, setting the division of profits on oil revenues and other income, and allowing for an eventual referendum that will allow the people of southern Sudan to choose their own autonomous government.

Sudan's civil war began in 1983, with black Africans from the south of the country-- where Christianity and traditional African religions dominate-- revolting against the Islamic government controlled by the country's Muslim majority in the north.