Both before and since Sudan gained its independence in 1956, the people living outside the central area around the capital city, Khartoum, have been marginalized. They have not had an equal role in governing the nation and their regions have not been developed as has the central area around Khartoum.The degree to which this has been a problem is clear when one recognizes that the central government has been at war with one or more groups of its people for all but about ten years of Sudan’s 55 years of independence.

This brief history has been marked by social, economic, and political inequality, and continuing rebellion by those subjugated in an attempt to correct injustices.The ruling clique exploits differences of race, language, culture and religion to maintain its rule.

Sudan’s recent North-South civil war (1983 – 2005) resulted in over 2 million deaths and displaced more than 4 million. In 2003, as negotiations to settle the North-South civil war gained traction, the central government responded to a rebellion in the western region of Darfur with a scorched-earth campaign that quickly resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and displacement of over 3 million people, most of whom remain in perilous circumstances in displacement camps and refugee camps along the Sudan-Chad border.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 (CPA) established a Government of National Unity for an interim period of six years, charged with settling remaining issues of power-sharing and wealth-sharing as well as security arrangements and boundary setting between North and South. The CPA also called for legislation to permit the first national elections since 1986 and for a referendum in early January of 2011 in which Southern Sudan will vote on whether to remain united with the North or separate and face the future as an independent nation.

But today, the situation in the war-weary South is increasingly volatile due to the fragile peace agreement – many of the provisions of the CPA have yet to be implemented - and to recent inter-tribal violence and resulting new displacements. So while the crisis in Sudan continues in Darfur, it does not end there. Sudanese fear that the elections in April 2010 and referendum on Southern secession in January 2011 could lead to more mass violence.

The causes of the war are many but generally fall under an umbrella of greed. The central government has always been ruled by one or more elements of riverine Arabs. That ruling clique has little regard for human suffering or human life when it comes to maintaining their control of the wealth and power in the nation.

Sudan Advocacy Action Forum was formed in 2000 in an effort to help bring a just and lasting peace to all of Sudan.