Summary: Sudan is among the top recipients of U.S. foreign aid, globally, and has been for decades. We provide them a lot of assistance. Bilateral aid, emergency humanitarian aid, and support for peacekeeping operations, has totaled over $1 billion annually in recent years. "Consolidation and strengthening of the nation Sudan" is seen as the biggest governance challenge. The U.S. aid provided to Sudan is supposed to “accelerate progress in the critical areas of governance, rule of law, conflict mitigation, economic development, delivery of basic services, and security sector reform.” Efforts to build the country’s agricultural capacity and reduce its dependency on food aid are a central component of economic growth objectives. There are some restrictions on U.S. assistance (that I will need to find out exactly what they are) that may limit the help that we can provide Sudan. There are disputes over whether or not we should send a U.S. ambassador to Sudan, because if we did it would most likely be seen as a key step toward improving relations, and some contend it would raise the caliber of the bilateral dialogue. Although, we are hesitant to do so because we fear that it will display an acceptance of their regime's abuses. There is a low level of trust between Khartoum and the United States. The Sudanese see it that we have "moved the goalpost" on lifting sanctions, yet U.S. officials say that Sudan continues to "commit violations of human rights and modern rules of war... so grave as to make it impossible to proceed"
Reflection: The fact that we provide so many funds to assist Sudan, and seemingly nothing is accomplished in terms of the country politically and economically seems ridiculous and it is obvious that something needs to change. The money we are providing in enormous sums seems to fund short term solutions. There is a very large debate over the amount of intervention that the U.S. should use to help the problem in Sudan. The Sudanese are participating in rights that violate human rights and the modern rules of war, and until they cease to do so we will mostly refuse to intervene on that part. Although, it seems that if someone does not intervene then nothing will be accomplished and we will continue to shell out billions of dollars to emergency humanitarian aid, which will save lives for the mean time, but in the long run nothing is solved. We may need to get over the fact that what they are doing is terribly wrong and go over there and deal with their abusive regime, then work towards fixing and stabilizing their government, then proceed to assistance of the rest of the country which would closely relate to food security, since malnutrition is so large in Sudan that it would have no choice but to be addressed quickly after this supposed "stable" government be implemented.
Have you come across any ideas for long term solutions?
ReplyDeleteExplained in Section 6: Solutions in the final draft.
ReplyDelete