S/PV.5119 Security Council

In accordance with the understanding reached in the Council’s prior consultations, I shall take it that the Security Council agrees to extend an invitation under rule 39 of its provisional rules of procedure to Mr. Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the Sudan and head of the peace support operation. It is so decided. The Security Council will now begin its consideration of the item on its agenda. The Security Council is meeting in accordance with the understanding reached in its prior consultations. Members of the Council have before them the report of the Secretary-General on the Sudan, document S/2005/57. At this meeting, the Security Council will hear a briefing by Mr. Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the Sudan and head of the peace support operation, to whom I give the floor. Mr. Pronk: Members of the Council have before them the report of the Secretary-General on the Sudan pursuant to Security Council resolutions 1547 (2004) and 1574 (2004), in which the Council asked the Secretary-General to submit, as soon as possible after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, recommendations on the size, structure and mandate of a United Nations operation that would be established in support of the implementation of the Agreement. The parties are to be congratulated on the wisdom and statesmanship they displayed in reaching the Agreement and on succeeding in bringing the talks to a close by the end of the year, in accordance with the commitments they gave at the historic meeting of the Security Council in Nairobi, Kenya, held, as the members of the Council may remember, in November 2004. The signing of the Agreement marks the start of the six-month pre-interim period. This six-month pre- interim period will be followed by a six-year interim period, in the middle of which, according to the agreement, national elections will be held. At the end of the interim period, almost six and a half years from now, the population of south Sudan will settle the question of the status of south Sudan in a referendum to decide between unity and secession. The Secretary-General recommends that the United Nations Mission in the Sudan will work for a further six-month period after the referendum to help the Government ensure that the results are implemented. The successful implementation of those results will mark the exit point for the peace support operation. Of course, it goes without saying that the work of the United Nations funds, programmes and agencies will continue after that point. While the agreements signed in Nairobi detail the implementation of the Peace Agreement, some areas still remain to be agreed. This process will be completed by the new presidency of the Sudan, which is to be formed following the acceptance of the new constitution, which is being drafted at this moment. The presidency will be composed of President Al-Bashir and Vice-Presidents Taha and Garang. When they signed the Agreement in January 2005, the parties put a few remaining issues, such as the size of the armies, into the hands of the presidency. This means that a considerable amount of work remains to be done in the months ahead. With the initialling of the agreements on 31 December 2004 and the signature of the Peace Agreement on 9 January 2005, the parties started the clock running on a demanding timetable that lays out a road map to the implementation of the Agreement according to a number of fixed milestones. By sticking to their commitment to sign on time, the parties have created a valuable political momentum that must be harnessed to keep implementation moving forward on schedule through the pre-interim period up to 9 July and into the interim period of the following six years. All of that means that both the parties and the international community, which has helped them in the period up to the Peace Agreement, have to work very hard in order to sustain the momentum. We are now almost one month into the six-month pre-interim period, and, of course, we cannot afford to lose any time in taking important decisions on implementation. Moreover, the environment for implementation in both the pre-interim and interim periods contains risks and challenges. Some of these were mentioned by the Secretary-General in his report (S/2005/57). The need to provide political solutions to the problems in Darfur is one clear example, but there are many more. Those problems are bound to increase if there is delay or disappointment in slow implementation. That is why we have already taken steps to avoid delay. We have prepared measures to support the parties in their implementation of the Agreement through planning and preparations carried out under the mandate of the United Nations Advance Mission in the Sudan (UNAMIS). We have had a functional mission headquarters on the ground for a number of months; we have developed detailed plans for the establishment of an institutional framework for the United Nations in south Sudan; there have been consultations and briefings with both the Government of the Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) on those issues since July last year; and the logistical and operational plan to deploy just over 10,000 troops for monitoring and verification has been developed in detail. The core of that consists of 750 military observers. They will have to carry out a difficult task in a wide area of 1,000 by 1,250 kilometres with very poor communications. Professional planning requires that they will have to be assisted by an enabling force of some 5,000 and a protection force of approximately 4,000, all included in a total number of 10,000 personnel. In the light of the circumstances, that is a relatively lean deployment. We are ready to send them to begin their work on the ground as soon as we have the necessary status of forces agreement. I would like to express, on behalf of the Secretary-General, our thanks to the countries that have already committed troops to the intended peace support operation. That will make it possible for us to initiate the first phase of deployment as soon as we have the mandate and a status of forces agreement. None of the Member States that have responded positively to the Secretary-General’s appeal with adequate capacities have been excluded. If solutions are not found to the conflicts in Darfur and elsewhere in the Sudan, any peace support operation limited to south Sudan would be affected by the consequences of those conflicts. As has been said many times, peace in the Sudan is indivisible. Both President Al-Bashir and Chairman Garang have, time and again — in particular since the signing of the Peace Agreement — made clear that they understand that finding solutions to the conflict in Darfur and similar conflicts in other parts of the Sudan is now a clear objective for 2005. That underlines the importance of the national conference provided for in the Peace Agreement. The indivisibility of peace in the Sudan also has consequences for the United Nations peace support operation. Resolutions 1556 (2004) and 1564 (2004) requested the Secretary-General to incorporate into the mission contingency planning for Darfur. That has been carried out in accordance with the Council’s welcoming the lead role of the African Union in the search for political and security solutions to the conflict in Darfur. It is essential that the mandate for the future United Nations mission in the Sudan take account of all these efforts to achieve peace in Darfur so that we can see progress towards a sustainable solution through a well-fused and broadly supported strategy. Earlier, I mentioned risks. One of them is that violence could return if the causes of the conflict are not addressed. To support the peace process and to render peace sustainable, it will not be enough to monitor the ceasefire and to help in avoiding breaches of the Agreement; it will also be necessary to help take away possible reasons for the parties to the Agreement to return to violence. And it will be necessary to remove the incentive for others in the Sudan to seek a solution to their problems through force. Those others could be people in other parts of the Sudan who feel oppressed, marginalized or neglected. That would apply to, for instance, groups in eastern Sudan, but also to the very poor and to tribes or other sections of the population that consider themselves discriminated against. They may feel that their expectations following the Peace Agreement are not being met. They may become frustrated, protest, mobilize constituencies and resort to violent action. For all those reasons, it is important that the peace process be as comprehensive as possible. The report submitted to the Council by the Secretary- General therefore refers to, for example, demining so that farmers can till their land and children can play in peace. It also refers to the disarmament and demobilization of combatants and to the reform of the security sector, which so far consists of both regular troops and members of paramilitary and militia groups. The report also refers to the return and reintegration of displaced persons and refugees — 4 million of them — which must go hand in hand with the reintegration of demobilized soldiers and the provision of some kind of support to the local population that has stayed in the region and must share its resources — such as land and water — with the returnees. The reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure, the recovery of production capacity, the rehabilitation of social structures, reconciliation between former opponents, the reduction of poverty, reassurances that the population’s basic needs will be met from now on: all of that is part of a comprehensive approach aimed at replacing ad hoc relief from the outside with sustainable development from within. That will require good economic and political governance, predominance of the rule of law, the reform of State institutions, a new constitution, the guaranteeing of human rights, further democratization, an all-inclusive national development policy and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, including for the poorest parts of the country. Not only peace, but also development, is indivisible. In a country where one in four children dies before the age of 5 — in south Sudan — there is not much chance for survival, let alone for the realization of people’s expectations beyond a ceasefire and a peace agreement. That is an enormous challenge for a nation that is rebuilding itself 50 years after having become independent following a long period of colonial rule. The people of the Sudan have to do all this, basically, themselves. It is their nation, their peace and their future, but they will have to be helped from outside. That is what they expect and we will have to meet that expectation. As I have said, in order to render peace sustainable, the Government and the people of Sudan will have to choose a comprehensive approach. That means addressing all causes of conflict — none excluded — in a holistic and balanced way, avoiding new distortions. The peace support operation will have to follow the same pattern: comprehensive and balanced. It is not the task of the United Nations to carry out functions that can better be fulfilled by the Sudanese themselves. The support operation will have to be catalytic, not turnkey. That is why we are aiming at a relatively light footprint. We intend to regularly reassess and review tasks and priorities in the light of changing circumstances through the years. We will have to show a clear awareness of the impact of all foreign activities on Sudanese society, boosting those with a positive impact, such as the use of local resources — including local manpower and womanpower in combination with capacity-building and training — while also avoiding negative consequences such the distortion of the local economy or the spread of HIV/AIDS. A comprehensive approach does not require a completely new structure for the United Nations mission. On the contrary, many United Nations institutions, agencies, funds and programmes present in Sudan have developed a lot of expertise and have built an impressive capacity that should be used to its fullest extent, in a unified manner. Here, there must be common objectives, mutual consultation and coordination and no overlap of the mission with activities of the United Nations country team, but complementarity and cooperation. That is what the Secretary-General has emphasized in his report: a comprehensive and unified approach; peace and development, from the inside and as autochthonous as possible, that is, only facilitated — not managed — from the outside. Let me conclude by citing the central recommendation of the Secretary-General in his report: that the Security Council, acting under chapter VI of the Charter, authorize the deployment of a multidimensional United Nations peace support operation with a mandate to assist the parties in achieving a sustainable peace in Sudan through its good offices, and in aspects of security, governance, humanitarian assistance and development.

I thank Mr. Pronk for his briefing. In accordance with the understanding reached in the Council’s prior consultations, I invite Council members to informal consultations to continue our discussion of the subject.