| | The twenty-year conflict in Sudan has been marked by gross human rights abuses - two million dead, four million displaced since 1983 - and recurring famine and epidemics. In the government's eyes, the centuries-long residents of the southern oilfields pose a security threat to the oilfields: ownership of the south's natural resources is contested by southern rebels led by the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The government has helped to create this 'security' situation by forging ahead with oil development in southern territory under circumstances in which its Nuer and Dinka residents have no right to participate in their own governance and in which the government has historically ridden roughshod over their rights, even before oil was discovered. The abuse most connected to oil development in southern Sudan has been forcible displacement - by military means - of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of residents in order to provide a 'cordon sanitaire' for international oil companies. |
