Emmanuel Jal is a hip-hop artist and humanitarian, as well as a former child solider.

Below is an open letter from hip-hop artist, activist and former child soldier Emmanuel Jal, urging President Barack Obama to push for a strong Arms Trade Treaty at the U.N. conference this month. This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

In Sudan and around the world, children are forced into warfare. Many end up as child soldiers, forced to take lives and continue the cycle of violence that they have been born into. Child soldiers are found today in as many as 20 countries.

I was one of them. I was fortunate enough to have escaped to Kenya and found another life through music. But the lives of many children are cut short before they can escape. The most difficult part of this situation is that these children do not have a choice when they are introduced, often after they have been orphaned, to a perpetual war zone and raised by the harsh reality of the violence around them.

The decision is not theirs to make. It is not made by the South Sudanese child holding the AK-47, the young boy fighting government forces in Colombia or a child soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The decision to continue the violence is made by people who benefit from conflict – those who sell weapons and bullets to violent groups and create a world of guns and bloodshed. For the child soldiers I knew and those in other conflict zones, war and violence becomes all that they know in life.

Where there are guns and bullets, there is violence. And when violence and lack of opportunity are combined, often times children are pushed to extremes to survive in a hostile environment.

It reaches a point where you ask yourself who would sell bullets to people willing to kill those who are innocent, rape women, or train children to continue this violence. When you learn that selling the weapons used to commit these acts is entirely legal, you wonder why the international community has done nothing to stop it. This requires more than an embargo that takes place after the killing; it requires a way to stop weapons and ammunition from getting to that person or group in the first place.

We now have an opportunity to do just that with the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty being discussed later this month. It offers a cure to the problems and tragedies and many other have faced. This treaty can help by stopping the flow of arms to people who commit atrocities and recruit children to fight in the trenches of war zones around the world. Most of the world’s nations see the need to stop the unregulated trade of weapons and support such a treaty in some form.

I strongly support this treaty because of what uncontrolled arms have done to the people of South Sudan. The war killed 2.5 million people and tore apart the core of my family. These deaths happened when militias were handed weapons and ordered to terrorize unarmed villages, displacing much of the population. The government of Sudan also sent Russian bombers called Antonopes with the idea that “if you need to catch the fish, you have to drain the pond” – The fish being the ‘rebels’ and the pond the ‘civilians.’ – This situation is still happening in Darfur and the Nuba Mountains today. If the weapons had been regulated from the beginning, this all might well have been avoided.

The Arms Trade Treaty has been discussed by the U.N. for years and international NGOs such as Amnesty International have been pushing for arms trade regulation for more than a decade. The ATT makes arms sales contingent upon their humanitarian outcome and prevents arms transfers that may lead to human rights abuses. But the ATT can be much better if countries include stronger language preventing arms sales to states and groups using child soldiers and if they add specific bans on violence against children.

In my experience in South Sudan and Ethiopia, we saw horrible suffering. The camp we were in was a sea of lost children forced to bury their own dead. We had rules against killing civilians, but unfortunately that is not always the case. Children are forced to do horrible things that destroy their innocence and scar their souls forever. At that age, a child’s place is in school; they should never be forced to pick up a gun. The things children must face when they are used as soldiers are unacceptable and we must find a way to end such a practice.

The best way to stop the use of child soldiers is to prevent wars from happening in the first place and a good way to stop wars is to keep weapons out of the wrong hands.

I ask that President Obama work with the countries participating in the U.N. conference this month and push for a strong Arms Trade Treaty. To the people of the United States, I hope they understand this treaty is not about the U.N. taking their guns. It is about preventing war and saving lives.

Click on the image above to access the full-size infographic

As news breaks about the surrender of the “Terminator,” Bosco Ntaganda, to the United States embassy in Kigali today, the US State Department was quick to note that it “strongly support[s] the ICC and their investigations on the atrocities committed in the DRC.” Further, Ambassador Stephen Rapp, head of the Office of Global Criminal Justice, tweeted “Bosco #Ntaganda surrenders in #Rwanda and asks to the taken to the #ICC. We are helping to facilitate his transfer.”

This development, and the U.S. administration’s quick signaling of its intent to adhere to obligations to transfer Ntaganda to the court to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity is welcome, and encouraging. Thus, I will not start with the call that “the US should take all steps to ensure the speedy transfer of Ntaganda to The Hague.”

What Happened?

Amnesty International, as part of a wide swath of civil society demanding the same, has been campaigning to see the fugitive Ntaganda appear before the ICC for years, as part of its broader effort to demand and secure justice for the Congolese people; it is natural to be curious as to “why now?”

The story behind his surrender to the US embassy will likely take some time to emerge. With reports of in-fighting among the armed M23 group in the DRC, and reports over the weekend that fighters loyal to Ntaganda had been “routed” by a rival faction, it may be that he simply saw the ICC as a safe alternative to the faction’s deteriorating situation. Maybe he was “encouraged” to surrender. I will note that it was interesting—if not telling—that the news of the surrender was first announced by the Rwandan government…but enough speculation.

What I am confident in offering is that his surrender is inseparable from the massive surge in pressure to secure justice for the worst of crimes under the law that is the charge of last resort for the ICC. The cumulative effects of the grassroots movement “Kony2012,” the Bashir Watch and justice for Darfur campaigns, the demands and actions taken to address the crimes in Syria, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere , and indeed the sustained call by activists to see fugitives from the ICC brought to justice (to name just a few), are yielding results.

I am confident that Bosco Ntaganda’s “decision” to surrender for transfer to the Hague wasn’t much of a decision at all; rather, it was the only meaningful option left, given the climate made possible by the strengthened and increasingly global sentiment that the perpetrators of the worst crimes against humanity can no longer enjoy impunity.

What Next?

Now, as for what is next: the US should take all steps to ensure the speedy transfer of Ntaganda to The Hague. As of this afternoon, it looks promising that the US will do so.

While the delivery of Ntaganda to the ICC to face charges for crimes he is accused of committing in the DRC will be yet another step forward for international justice, I needn’t tell this audience that justice for atrocities remains elusive. There are still fugitives from the ICC. There are still unanswered crimes in Sri Lanka, and no justice in sight for tens of thousands of Syrians who face atrocity today.

Yet, the Obama administration can do more than hand over wanted fugitives. By deed and through action, the administration can continue to repair the credibility of the US on the international stage and—as President Obama offered in his second inaugural address—allow the US to serve as a “source of hope” for those who long for “human dignity and justice”.

With the (hopefully) imminent transfer of “the Terminator” to the ICC, President Obama should strengthen the credibility of the US as a source of hope for those who long for justice by reaffirming the United States’ signature to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

You can ask him to do so here

This post is also available in Spanish.

Click image to view full infographic and list of wanted fugatives

Today, supporters of human rights mark the Global Day for International Justice, an anniversary the need for which makes ‘celebration’ difficult, if not impossible.  A cursory look over last year of developments as it relates to securing justice for the most egregious of crimes—war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide—might yield cause for optimism, however.

Five Steps Forward for Justice

1. Over the last year, following a UN Security Council referral of Libya, the International Criminal Court (ICC) found reasonable grounds for issuing arrest warrants for top Libyan officials, even as conflict was ongoing, demonstrating the ability and importance of the court in active crises.
2. The ICC saw the first verdict and sentence handed down as Thomas Lubanga answered for conscription of children in devastating conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
3. Also over the last year, Laurent Gbagbo, the former head of state of Cote d’Ivoire, became the first head of state to be surrendered to the ICC for alleged crimes, only one week after his indictment.
4. At the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, Ratko Mladic finally faces prosecution for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide for the largest mass murder in Europe since the end of World War II.
5. The first conviction of a former head of state since the Nuremburg trials, as my colleague Angela Chang describes, was a historic step for international justice.

Finally, this year has seen a dramatic increase in interest by the public at-large in international justice issues. Likely a combination of the successes noted above, the dramatic interest in the #Kony2012 campaign, and awareness of the brutal and unconscionable crimes committed in Syria, the Sudan, Libya, and elsewhere, there has been a real and palpable public awareness of the essential need for a functioning system of international justice.

Five Steps Back

1. In Sudan, where Amnesty continues to document ongoing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states, the Sudan Defence Minister, the governor of Southern Kordofan, and the President of Sudan remain fugitives from the ICC for charges related to crimes in Darfur. The UN Security Council has yet to take any decisive action on the crisis, nor any meaningful condemnation of several countries  that have hosted the fugitives.
2. In the DRC, Bosco Ntganda—wanted by the ICC to answer charges of war crimes and child conscription—served as a Congelese general much of the year, until his recent defection and resumption of armed insurgency now threatening civilians in eastern DRC.
3. In Yemen, President Saleh secured immunity from criminal investigation and prosecution despite widespread and grave human rights violations that demand independent investigation.
4. In Sri Lanka, impunity for war crimes and other grave abuses committed in the waning months of conflict remain a stain on our fight for justice for victims.
5. Finally, as atrocities continue in Syria, the Security Council has yet to act on what should be the most non-controversial demand of Amnesty and others: refer the situation to the ICC prosecutor. The crimes committed in Syria evade description in their brutality, and utter rejection of the most basic norms and international law.  Further, they are self-evident crimes of the highest order, and steadfast rejection of the Russian government to refer the situation to the ICC defies all logic and conscience, and threatens the very authority of the Council itself (tell them so here).

Indeed, it is hard to identify any singular interest that champions the ICC as powerful as those defending the Syrian or Sudanese regimes, save our collective power by acting in concert. In addition to the referral of the situation in Syria to the ICC, Amnesty International members are calling on the UN Secretary General to provide all necessary resources to support the arrest and surrender of fugitives from the ICC.

“Justice”—a concept older than any law—is not just about arrests and prosecutions, however. ‘Truth’ and ‘restitution’ for victims are integral to the concept. Amnesty International’s Demand Justice Now—launched today—is a resource for exploring the complexities of international justice, in addition to taking action to bring our collective power to effect.

While discussing International Justice Day, a friend and colleague of mine noted the success of Earth Day in entering the collective consciousness of people across the globe. International Justice Day, a young day of note in comparison, needs to be in our collective consciousness.

It is impossible to delink the atrocities we bear witness to today from our weaknesses in securing justice for abuses of the past. Justice cannot be an afterthought, decoupled from our efforts to protect the threatened and vulnerable. Justice cannot be something sought as political winds or diplomatic expediency favor.

Justice must be demanded now.

The rainy season in Sudan has begun, and for UN and aid agencies operating just across the Sudan border in the dozens of refugee camps housing those who’ve fled from the indiscriminate bombing of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), a logistic and operational nightmare is very present.

For the hundreds of thousands displaced by the bombing campaign, food and (paradoxically) water shortages have reached crisis proportions.

Last night, Amnesty released its newest research findings in ‘We Can Run Away From Bombs, But Not From Hunger,’ documenting the illegal and indiscriminate bombing campaign of the SAF in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states, in Sudan.

Across the border in South Sudan, over 150,000 refugees from Khartoum’s campaign have found strained resources, inadequate shelter, and countless informal encampments of other men, women, and children fleeing what are clearly war crimes, and what may constitute crimes against humanity by the Sudanese government.

Humanitarian organizations have been blocked from entering Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, with few outsiders gaining access (such as Nick Kristof). The result of this denial of humanitarian aid is and will continue to be the death of civilians on a scale that should violate any conscience.

Last night in a pointed (and somewhat unexpected) question, I was asked on air during the Al Jazeera News Hour if the international community was suffering from “Sudan fatigue.” The seemingly endless flow of the displaced, accounts of horrific events, and obituaries of the dead has been met with weak Security Council statements, over one hundred un-executed indictments for grave crimes, and an endless barrage of obstruction by Khartoum.

If the international community is suffering from Sudan fatigue, it is of our own making. While the people of the Sudans suffer, the international community has constructed a tiring treadmill of half measures and anemic statements. As China or Russia lament an “aid crisis,” they arm the Sudanese government with the tools to create the crisis.

The international community—and the UN Security Council in particular—is not lacking a path forward, but rather has lacked the will. The need for action is urgent. Steps must be taken now.

As strongly as I can convey in words, the cost to humanity for delayed or weak action at this very moment will directly lead to a catastrophe that should not only stain humanity itself, but threaten the credibility of the international institutions designed to safeguard it.

What needs to happen Immediately:

• ALL arms transfers to Sudan must be suspended. States—such as Russia, China, Belarus, the Ukraine, and others—who arm the Sudanese government can no longer plausibly deny complicity in the crimes documented in “We Can Run…”

• The Security Council must condemn and demand an end to the indiscriminate bombing by Khartoum, and establish and independent inquiry into the crimes committed over the last year in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.

• The Security Council must demand humanitarian access to Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states in Sudan. There must be consequences for failure to allow aid to civilians in these two states, and the council must make them clear.

• The Security Council must extend the arms embargo on Darfur—which is being violated and continues to fuel conflict in Darfur—to the whole of Sudan, and UN member states must develop an effective global Arms Trade Treaty this month.

Many of those likely responsible in Sudan for these crimes and the creation of a humanitarian crisis are wanted by the International Criminal Court for their roles in Darfur, including Ahmed Haroun—the current governor of Southern Kordofan (on 42 counts of war crimes and Crimes Against Humanity), the Sudanese Defense Minister Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein, and indeed, the head of the Sudanese state Omar al-Bashir on additional charges of Genocide.

The impunity these men have enjoyed, and the lack of a strong international condemnation of continued crimes is inseparable from the suffering that has followed forth. The Security Council and the international community must take some ownership for what has followed. Tell them to do so here. And it will own quite the travesty should it fail to act now.

According to the US Department of State Country report for human rights practices, the 22-year civil war that engulfed Sudan claimed an estimated 3 million lives and impacted tens million more. Like many other African states,  it gained independence with staggeringly little beyond the determination of the people of Southern Sudan and in the ground the blessing and curse of oil reserves.

What was and remains different is that unlike the other waves of independence, Southern Sudan has its former ruler and military adversary right on its borders and sadly what had been hoped to be the end of a terrible conflict only went underground and is now threatening to erupt fully in.

Since February 2011 the reports of attacks, killings, and destruction to people’s livelihoods have been consistently worsening and alarming. Amnesty International’s Science and Technology initiative has been using  satellite technology to document abuses and attacks as part of an effort to bring to justice the Sudanese Head of State Omar  Al-Bashir for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes before the International Criminal Court.

If this were not bad enough, Khartoum continues to purchase weapons which are being used not only to continue to destabilize Darfur but also obviously to support its actions against South Sudan. The icing on the cake is the Sudanese government’s hiring of powerful lobbyists in Washington, DC, to start to chip away at its pariah status and no doubt seek to lift U.S. economic sanctions as quickly as possible.

This sadly is business as usual. There was little evidence to indicate that Khartoum, which was dragged to acceptance on the independence of the south, would deviate from its pattern of egregious human rights abuses and destabilization, especially when oil is involved. For the countries supplying arms and weapons, with without even some semblance of oversight and accountability as is envisaged under a global Arms Trade Treaty anticipated to be adopted by the UN in July, there is no incentive to disturb such lucrative business. For the people now “advising” the Sudanese government on its activities in Washington, representing a regime that has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, there is clearly no misunderstanding about what is the bottom line.

It is therefore up to us to make sure that business as usual does not continue as usual.

In the past week, clashes between the South Sudan army and rebels have killed at least 70 people. Continued fighting over the disputed oil-producing region of Abyei threatens to derail peace talks between the north and the south.

The tense political climate has led Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party to take action to crush opposition. It has cracked down on opposition party members, students, and activists through violence and illegal detentions. This week the government threatened to silence internet-based dissent by using ”cyber jihadists”.

Fighting in the Darfur region, where villages continue to be burnt down, has forced an estimated 66,000 people—mainly women, children, and the elderly—to seek safety in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps since January of this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The mass movement of IDPs to camps has placed “considerable strain” on resources and services, said Georg Charpentier, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, as arriving IDPs have led to increased demand for protection, food, and sanitation facilities.

Threats to the safety and wellbeing of the people of Sudan remain, and mounting political tension and violence related to the north-south split brings an increased risk of further human rights abuses in the upcoming months. We must keep up international pressure to continue to monitor and protect human rights in Sudan.

Take action to ensure accountability for crimes committed in Darfur

You can also take action now against the illegal detention of political dissenters and human rights advocates

Sara Harden, Africa Program, contributed to this blog post

Some former child soliders have depicted their experiences of conflict in art © Amnesty International

Rawan is just 13 years old, though he looks older. He was not even 11 when he left his home and became a child soldier. He – and the 40 other boys who talked to us about their experiences – are living proof of the use of child soldiers in Chad.

Children are still being used by both the army and armed opposition groups. Thousands have joined up in recent years as the armed conflict between the Chadian army and rebel groups has intensified in the region and the Darfur conflict over the border in Sudan has engulfed eastern Chad.

Most child recruits are boys aged between 13 and 18, but some are as young as 10. Most receive military training, including weapons handling, and many are involved in combat. Hazam, who was 15 when he joined a rebel group, told us: “What was the most difficult was taking part in the fighting. Many of us were my age. There is nothing joyful in the rebellion.”

Some children have been forcibly recruited. But some said they were encouraged by their communities to avenge killings and looting. Many have been driven by extremes of poverty and the lack of schools and jobs in their villages. For example, Mahamane told us that because his father was old, and there was not enough food to go round, he joined an armed group when he was 13 to help his family and his mother.

The Chadian army officially denies any involvement in recruiting and using children, but Yasin was recruited by government soldiers in late 2008 when he was 16 years old. He lived in one of many camps for the internally displaced in eastern Chad – places of lost hopes and growing despair where boys are at particular risk from marauding recruiters. A resident of one camp we visited said: “There are only old people here. All our young boys have entered the army.” Other very young boys were still visible at the end of 2010 in military convoys in the city of Abéché, in eastern Chad and even in the capital N’Djamena.

There have been efforts to demobilize child soldiers and reintegrate them into civilian life. However, programmes have been partial, ineffective and threatened by continuing violence. Few of the thousands of former child soldiers who need support to rebuild their lives have been helped.

The security situation in eastern Chad is highly volatile, and the United Nations peace keeping forces withdrew at the end of December 2010 at the request of the Chadian government. Deep poverty persists, and many demobilized children drift back into soldiering for want of alternative opportunities such as secondary education or employment.

The recruitment and use of children as soldiers has been universally condemned as abhorrent and unacceptable. Child soldiers suffer physical, social and psychological harm. The recruitment and use of child soldiers is a war crime – taken so seriously by the international community that if a state is unable or unwilling to deal with those responsible, the International Criminal Court can intervene. Yet last month Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno ordered an amnesty for crimes committed by armed groups, which means that countless abuses against children used as soldiers will go unpunished.

Despite repeated promises by the Chadian government, children are still being used as soldiers. This scandalous child abuse must not be allowed to continue.

While the whole world is watching the outcome of the South Sudan referendum, Darfur continues to burn. New satellite images released by Amnesty’s Science for Human Rights Program provide shocking evidence that grave human rights violations continue in Darfur 8 years after the outbreak of the conflict. The situation has deteriorated in the run up to the referendum in South Sudan last month.

More alarmingly, the escalation in violence has been largely ignored by the international community, which is focusing on the formation of a new state in the south of the country.

Click to see full graphic

The Negeha region of South Darfur
The images were analyzed by our partners from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and show irrefutably that civilians were targeted in the Negeha region of south Darfur with whole villages burned to the ground as recently as December. We have previously reported that in December alone more than 20,000 people were displaced by government attacks, including in Dar Al Salam, Shangil Tobaya and Khor Abeche displacement camps in north and south Darfur.

Based on new reports of offensives in the Negeha region in December 2010, we sought to document any apparent violations of international law through the targeting of civilian dwellings. According to reports, the villages of Negeha and Jaghara were burned in December 2010, resulting in more than 7,000 internally displaced persons. Satellite imagery of the region was collected and compared from three time periods: December 2005, January 2010, and December 2010.

In total, AAAS identified 819 individual structures as damaged or destroyed. Of these, 265 suffered damage between December 2005 and January 2010, while 554 did so between January and December 2010.

The release of the findings coincides with other recent high profile uses of satellite imagery in connection with the referendum, and builds on our three-year-old Eyes on Darfur project. It is a continuation of several years of work to use geospatial tools for human rights monitoring.

Where is the commitment to justice?
The new images are a painful reminder of the collective failure of the international community to ensure accountability for the crimes committed in Darfur. Referring to the recent UN assistance for Ahmed Haroun—wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court―Scott Edwards, Amnesty International USA Africa Advocacy Director made the following statement (which I believe leaves nothing to add):

When the United Nations Mission in Sudan gives a ride to one of the alleged architects of systematic murder, rape, and torture in Darfur, we have to question the current state of commitment to justice for Darfur. It then becomes easier to understand why the crimes documented in the Negeha analysis continue unabated. Impunity—that’s what the satellite imagery currently shows.

For updates on this and other stories about human rights in Sudan, follow me on Twitter.

While many observers are optimistic that the referendum in South Sudan this Sunday will go ahead peacefully, the last few months do not bode well for the future human rights situation in the country (no matter what the outcome of the referendum will be).

Thousands have been displaced by the government’s military offensive in Darfur, while the international community’s attention is focused on preparations for the referendum and the negotiation of a peace agreement for Darfur.  Since December 2010, more than 20,000 people in Darfur have been displaced during attacks by the Khartoum government’s attacks on various parts of North and South Darfur, including camps for the displaced in Dar Al Salam, Shangil Tobaya and Khor Abeche. The international community shouldn’t repeat its mistakes from 2004 and 2005, when focus on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) led to an ignorance (and acceptance) of grave crimes committed in Darfur.

The April 2010 elections were marked by human rights violations and threats to freedom of expression in both the south and north of the country and  we remain concerned that such violations would occur again during or after the referendum.

Human rights should be at the heart of this coming referendum. The governments of unity and of south Sudan should make it clear that human rights violations will not be tolerated. The respect, protection and promotion of human rights in Sudan are vital to the success of this historic vote.

An Amnesty International delegation recently returned from Juba in southern Sudan where it assessed the human rights situation ahead of the referendum. To get detailed information about our human rights concerns in Sudan, please take a look at some of our resources:

• Media Briefing: Human rights violations surrounding the south Sudan referendum (pdf)
• Maps: Geography of Risk. A Background on South Sudan
• Satellite images: Eyes on Darfur

For an interesting non-AI resource, don’t forget to follow the Sudan Vote Monitor (SVM), which was launched today. SVM is a Sudanese civil society initiative to monitor the referendum and is based on the powerful Ushahidi plattform.

Lately, there’s been no shortage of news about Sudan. On January 9^th, the people of South Sudan will vote in a referendum that will determine whether or not South Sudan becomes independent. Thousands of southern Sudanese who have been living in the north for decades are making their way back to South Sudan to participate in what is sure to a historic event.

But as we wait with impatience for the referendum and as we plan ahead for what is likely to be an independent South Sudan, let’s not forget about Darfur.

Civilians in Darfur continue to be faced with violence and are subjected to human rights violations on a regular basis. Humanitarian aid organizations struggle to reach the people who rely on the aid. Armed groups and militias continue to attack villages, leading to more death and more displacement. Human rights defenders are still being systematically targeted.

And these are just some examples of the ways in which the situation has been deteriorating over the past year. Just two days ago, rebel officials in Darfur announced that it was highly unlikely that a peace deal between the government of Sudan and the Darfuri rebel group the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), would be signed on December 19, as originally planned. While the international community focuses on the referendum and on the North-South dialogue, peace efforts in Darfur are  going nowhere.

So as we prepare ourselves for what might come next, let’s make sure that we remember the people of Darfur.

1. Read our Sudan Referendum Briefing (pdf)
2. Follow this weekly blogging series. For daily updates and breaking news, follow me or Amnesty on Twitter
3. Look out for new materials, such as more maps and a resource guide, in the weeks running up to the referendum on January 9. New content will be posted on this blog or on our Sudan Country Page