‘Sudan suffers from lack of justice, uneven wealth distribution’: Nazir

Native administration leaders of the Rufa'a clans in eastern Sudan’s Sennar have called on the Sudanese government to work on an equitable distribution of power and wealth in the country.

“We call on all warring parties in Sudan to make peace in a serious and positive dialogue, to spare the country more scourges of war,” Bakri Ahmed El Faki, the spokesman for the Rufa’a Nazara (paramount tribal chiefs/native administration leaders) told Radio Dabanga in an interview on Friday.

He attributed the ongoing wars in the country to “the lack of justice and the uneven distribution of wealth and power, in particular the ownership of lands and hawakeer (lands traditionally used by a clan or tribal group).

“Disputes over land tenure rights are the main cause of the country’s crises, the wars in Darfur and the rest of Sudan,” El Faki said. He pointed to the recommendations of Sudan’s National Dialogue passed in October last year, “that called for the recognition of hawakeer being the main challenge for ending the wars”.

The Rufa’a spokesman urged Khartoum “to implement those decisions on the ground so as to achieve peace”.

He explained that the Rufa'a clans who returned from South Sudan to Sennar after the secession of South Sudan in July 2011 are facing “the same kind of problems with hawakeer and land tenure.

“The government of Sennar state has not implemented a ministerial decree of 2013 concerning the land rights of the nomads among the returnees from South Sudan, the opening of tracks for pastoralists, and the provision of services to a large number of villages in the state,” El Faki said.