[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Sudan: Oil and Rights Abuses

[Al Kagan]

>Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 15:19:59 -0600
>To: akagan at uiuc.edu
>Subject: Sudan: Oil and Rights Abuses
>From: africafocus at igc.org
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>Sudan: Oil and Rights Abuses
>
>AfricaFocus Bulletin
>Nov 28, 2003 (031128)
>(Reposted from sources cited below)
>
>Editor's Note 
>
>While diplomats say there are good chances of 
>achieving a peace settlement in Sudan by the end 
>of the year, fighting nevertheless continues in 
>western Sudan, and the United Nations has 
>appealed for $450 million to support some 3.5 
>million displaced Sudanese. Human Rights Watch 
>has just released an extensive new report 
>documenting the complicity of oil companies with 
>human rights abuses in Sudan The
>report also warns that disputes over oil revenue 
>have the potential to further prolong the 
>conflict.
>
>The report, entitled Sudan, Oil, and Human 
>Rights, notes that despite the recent withdrawal 
>of Canadian and Swedish companies, Asian 
>companies are continuing the operations together 
>with the Sudanese government. This issue of 
>AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a press release 
>and excerpts from the summary of the report.
>
>++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>Sudan: Oil Companies Complicit in Rights Abuses
>
>Human Rights Watch
>http://www.hrw.org/africa/sudan.php
>
>(London, November 25, 2003) The Sudanese 
>government's efforts to control oilfields in the 
>war-torn south have resulted in the displacement 
>of hundreds of thousands of civilians, Human 
>Rights Watch said in a report released today. 
>Foreign oil companies operating in Sudan have 
>been complicit in this displacement, and the 
>death and destruction that have accompanied it.
>
>[The full report, Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights, is available at:
>http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/sudan1103]
>
>The report, "Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights," 
>investigates the role that oil has played in 
>Sudan's civil war. This 754-page report is the 
>most comprehensive examination yet published of 
>the links between natural-resource exploitation 
>and human rights abuses.
>
>"Oil development in southern Sudan should have 
>been a cause of rejoicing for Sudan's people," 
>said Jemera Rone, Sudan researcher for Human 
>Rights Watch. "Instead, it has brought them 
>nothing but woe."
>
>The report documents how the government has used 
>the roads, bridges and airfields built by the 
>oil companies as a means for it to launch 
>attacks on civilians in the southern oil region 
>of Western Upper Nile (also known as Unity 
>state). In addition to its regular army, the 
>government has deployed militant Islamist 
>militias to prosecute the war, and has armed 
>southern factions in a policy of ethnic 
>manipulation and destabilization.
>
>Human Rights Watch urged that the current peace 
>negotiations deal comprehensively with the 
>legacy of Sudan's oil war, particularly the 
>ethnic divisions that persist in oilfields of 
>the south and threaten the long-term peace.
>
>The report provides evidence of the complicity 
>of oil companies in the human rights abuses. Oil 
>company executives turned a blind eye to 
>well-reported government attacks on civilian 
>targets, including aerial bombing of hospitals, 
>churches, relief operations and schools.
>
>"Oil companies operating in Sudan were aware of 
>the killing, bombing, and looting that took 
>place in the south, all in the name of opening 
>up the oilfields," said Rone. "These facts were 
>repeatedly brought to their attention in public 
>and private meetings, but they continued to 
>operate and make a profit as the devastation 
>went on."
>
>Conditions for civilians in the oilfields 
>actually worsened when the Canadian company 
>Talisman Energy Inc. and the Swedish company 
>Lundin Oil AB were lead partners in two 
>concessions in southern Sudan. Amid mounting 
>pressure from rights groups, Talisman sold its 
>interest in its Sudanese concessions in late 
>2002, and Lundin followed in June.
>
>These Western-based corporations were replaced 
>by the state-owned oil companies of China and 
>Malaysia - CNPC, or China National Petroleum 
>Corp., and Petronas, or Petrolium Nasional 
>Berhad - which had already been partners with 
>Talisman and Lundin. Following CNPC and 
>Petronas, a third state-owned Asian oil company, 
>India's ONGC Videsh Ltd., began operations in 
>Sudan.
>
>Statistics from the Sudanese government and the 
>oil companies show how the major share (60 
>percent) of the US$580 million received in oil 
>revenue by this poverty-stricken country in 2001 
>was absorbed by its military, both for foreign 
>weapons purchases and for the development of a 
>domestic arms industry.
>
>"The Sudanese government has used the oil money 
>in conducting scorched-earth campaigns to drive 
>hundreds of thousands of farmers and 
>pastoralists from their homes atop the oil 
>fields," said Rone. "These civilians have not 
>been compensated nor relocated peacefully-far 
>from it. Instead, government forces have looted 
>their cattle and grain, and destroyed their 
>homes and villages, killed and injured their 
>relatives, and even prevented emergency relief 
>agencies from bringing any assistance to them."
>
>The 20-year civil war in Sudan has been fought 
>between the Islamist, northern-based 
>Arab-speaking government and the vast 
>marginalized African populations of southern 
>Sudan, where the Sudan People's Liberation 
>Movement/Army (SPLM/A) has been the largest 
>rebel group. The war spread to eastern and 
>central Sudan, and while the parties signed a 
>cease-fire agreement in October 2002 western 
>Sudan remains engulfed in war.
>
>The report also covers the SPLM/A's role in the 
>struggle over oilfields. The regular SPLM/A 
>forces have carried out serious human rights 
>abuses, including summary execution of captured 
>combatants. Commanding officers of the SPLM/A 
>have taken no steps to investigate or punish 
>these crimes.
>
>Peace talks promoted by a troika of the United 
>States, Britain and Norway have been underway in 
>Kenya since June 2002. However, the Sudanese 
>government and the SPLM/A, the only parties to 
>the talks, have yet to agree on how to share 
>revenue from the oil reserves, most of which lie 
>in the south. The northern-based government has 
>agreed to a self-determination referendum for 
>the south, but not until 6 1/2 years after the 
>peace agreement is signed.
>
>"The hundreds of thousands of persons displaced 
>from the oilfields should be allowed to return, 
>with guarantees of safety and compensation for 
>their losses," Rone said. "This needs to be a 
>central part of the peace agreement."
>
>*************************************************************
>
>Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights
>
>[excerpts from report summary; full 22-page summary and full report
>available at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/sudan1103]
>
>SUMMARY
>
>The first export of crude oil from Sudan in 
>August 1999 marked a turning point in the 
>countryís complex civil war, now in its 
>twentieth year: oil became the main objective 
>and a principal cause of the war. Oil now 
>figures as an important remaining obstacle to a 
>lasting peace and oil revenues have been used by 
>the government to obtain weapons and ammunition 
>that have enabled it to intensify the war and 
>expand oil development. Expansion of oil 
>development has continued to be accompanied by 
>the violent displacement of the agro-pastoral 
>southern Nuer and Dinka people from their 
>traditional lands atop the oilfields. Members of 
>such communities continue to be killed or 
>maimed, their homes and crops burned, and their 
>grains and cattle looted.
>
>The large-scale exploitation of oil by foreign 
>companies operating in the theatre of war in 
>southern Sudan has increased human rights abuses 
>there and has exacerbated the long-running 
>conflict in Sudan, a conflict marked already by 
>gross human rights abusesótwo million dead, four 
>million displaced since 1983óand recurring 
>famine and epidemics.
>
>Forced displacement of the civilian population, 
>and the death and destruction that have 
>accompanied it, are the central human rights 
>issues relating to oil development in Sudan. The 
>government is directly responsible for this 
>forced displacement, which it has undertaken to 
>provide security to the operations of its 
>partners, the international and mostly foreign 
>state-owned oil companies. In the governmentís 
>eyes, the centuries-long residents of the 
>oilfields, the Nuer, Dinka, and other southern 
>Sudanese, pose a security threat to the 
>oilfields because control and ownership of the 
>southís natural resources are contested by 
>southern rebels and government officials 
>perceive the pastoral peoples as sympathetic to 
>the rebels. But the Sudanese government itself 
>has helped to create the threat by forging ahead 
>with oil development in southern territory under 
>circumstances in which its residents have no 
>right to participate in their own governance nor 
>share the benefits of oil develo!
>pment. Brute force has been a key component of 
>the governmentís oil development strategy.
>
>The oil in the ground and flowing through the 
>pipeline to the Red Sea supertanker port has 
>driven expulsions from Western Upper Nile/Unity 
>State, the area of the main oil production 
>today. In earlier campaigns in the 1980s 
>government troops and horsebacked militia of the 
>Baggara, Arabized cattle nomads of Darfur and 
>Kordofan, invaded from the northwest, destroying 
>communities and expelling much of the population 
>from the initial exploration areas, in Blocks 1, 
>2, and 4, dangerously situated on the 
>north-south border of Sudan. (Map B)
>
>In the 1990s the government embarked upon a more 
>sophisticated displacement campaign, through the 
>use of divide-and-conquer tactics: it bought off 
>rebel factions and exacerbated south-south 
>ethnic differences with arms supplies. Mostly 
>Nuer factions with political and other 
>grievances against the Dinka-officered rebel 
>Sudan Peopleís Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A, 
>referred to as SPLA when discussing the military 
>wing), emerged and a bloody south-south war 
>ensued, concentrated in the oilfield areas. 
>Campaigns of killing, pillage, and burning, 
>enabled by government troops and air support for 
>their southern allies who served as front 
>troops, cleared the way for Western and Asian 
>oil corporations to develop the basic 
>infrastructure for oil extraction and 
>transportation: rigs, roads, pumping stations, 
>and pipelines.
>
>The relationship of the war and displacement 
>campaign to oil development is evident: the oil 
>areas targeted for population clearance are 
>those where a concession has been granted and a 
>pipeline is imminent and/or nearby. The 
>availability of the means of transport of oil to 
>the market makes the nearest undeveloped block 
>economically viable. The agro-pastoralists 
>living there then become the target of forced 
>displacement. Since 1999, when the pipeline was 
>nearing completion and Blocks 1, 2, and 4 came 
>on line with 150,000, then 230,000 barrels of 
>crude oil produced daily, the main military 
>theatre has been in the adjacent Block 5A. Oil 
>revenues enable the government to increase its 
>military hardware: it tripled its fleet of 
>attack helicopters in 2001 with the purchase 
>abroad of twelve new helicoptersóused to deadly 
>effect in the killing of twenty-four civilians 
>at a relief food distribution site in early 
>2002, to cite only one example.
>
>In a number of cases, international oil 
>companies in Sudan have denied that any abuses 
>were taking place in connection with oil 
>exploration and production. Despite considerable 
>evidence to the contrary, oil company executives 
>have claimed that they were unaware of any 
>uncompensated forced displacement as a result of 
>oil operations. They have also claimed to have 
>undertaken investigations establishing that 
>abuses are minimal or nonexistent. As noted 
>below, such efforts do not stand up to scrutiny. 
>Increasingly, under pressure from 
>nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and some 
>concerned governments, oil company 
>representatives have claimed instead that they 
>are playing a positive role in difficult 
>circumstances to monitor and rein in abuses. As 
>detailed below, such claims have consistently 
>been self-serving. Human Rights Watch believes 
>that oil companies in Sudan, seeking to make a 
>profit in areas of the country wracked by civil 
>war and often brutally cleared of indigenous peo!
>ples, have an obligation to see that rights 
>abuses connected with oil production cease.
>
>...
>
>Ongoing armed conflict has led to continued 
>flight; establishment of government garrisons 
>has prevented the displaced from returning to 
>their homes. While both sides employ modern 
>weapons, the government has produced and 
>purchased more and better weapons with its new 
>oil money, including sixteen new attack 
>helicopter gunships in 2001-2002, more than 
>tripling its military helicopter fleet.
>
>The government made civilian suffering worse by 
>banning relief flights from reaching those who 
>try to cling on in areas the government wants 
>cleared. The government repeatedly refused 
>international relief access to Nuer and Dinka 
>oilfield areas that were in rebellion against 
>the government, calculating that the civilians, 
>who have lost everything in attacks on their 
>villages, would be forced by famine to migrate 
>elsewhereóanywhereóin search of food. It also 
>prohibited humanitarian access to those recently 
>displaced, if they remained in areas near the 
>oilfields.
>
>Even as the government entered into peace 
>negotiations in 2002, it stepped up its attempts 
>to close off Western Upper Nile/Unity State to 
>all relief except that which went to its 
>garrison towns. Finally, under extreme foreign 
>pressure and in the middle of peace talks, the 
>Sudanese government relented on humanitarian 
>access in October 2002. The ceasefire, signed 
>that same month, was broken mostly in Western 
>Upper Nile/Unity Stateís oilfields.
>
>...
>
>Like other oil companies engaged in Sudan, 
>Talisman knew or should have known that oil 
>production was taking place in areas where local 
>pastoral populations lacked the basic rights 
>necessary to defend their interests. Talisman 
>also knew or should have known of government 
>displacement and attacks on civilians in its and 
>adjacent concessions prior to its investment in 
>Sudan; it knew or should have known that the 
>government was attacking civilians in Talismanís 
>GNPOC concession in May 1999 and thereafter, and 
>that forced displacement of civilians by 
>government forces was occurring in this and 
>adjacent concessions. Although Talisman would 
>occasionally protest to the government of Sudan 
>(for instance, on the use of the airstrip), it 
>also knew or should have known that government 
>forces were targeting civilian infrastructure, 
>including aerial bombings of hospitals, 
>churches, and schools throughout the south and 
>the Nuba mountains.44
>
>Talismanís complicity in the governmentís abuses 
>was not limited to its inaction in the face of 
>the continued displacement campaign rolling 
>through the oil areas. Its activities in some 
>cases assisted forcible displacement and attacks 
>on civilians. For example, it allowed government 
>forces to use the Talisman/GNPOC airfield and 
>road infrastructure in circumstances in which it 
>knew or should have known that the facilities 
>would be used to conduct further displacement 
>and wage indiscriminate or disproportionate 
>military attacks that struck and/or targeted 
>civilians and civilian objects. Its activities 
>also allowed the government to expand its 
>program of forced displacement into Block 5A, 
>which had been overlooked in the conflict until 
>the pipeline neared completion just seventy-five 
>kilometers from Block 5Aís first drilling site.
>
>...
>
>Based on the findings of our research, Human 
>Rights Watch concludes that CNPC and Petronas 
>operations in the GNPOC Sudanese oil concession 
>Blocks 1,2, 4 (and the operations of Talisman 
>Energy prior to the sale of its interest), and 
>Lundin, Petronas, and OMV operations in Block 5A 
>have been complicit in human rights violations. 
>Their activities are inextricably intertwined 
>with the governmentís abuses; the abuses are 
>gross; the corporate presence fuels, 
>facilitates, or benefits from violations; and no 
>remedial measures exist to mitigate those 
>abuses. Human Rights Watch believes that a 
>corporation should not operate in Sudan if its 
>presence there has an unavoidable, negative 
>impact on human rights. Human Rights Watch 
>therefore recommends that all foreign oil 
>companies immediately suspend their operations 
>in Sudan, and agree to resume them only when 
>certain minimum human rights benchmarks are met.
>
>...
>
>The peace talks in August 2003 were to discuss 
>the outstanding issues. The parties were to 
>decide, among other things, on deployment of 
>troops and police during the interim period; the 
>SPLM/A wanted two armies (the SPLA and that of 
>the Sudanese government) and the government 
>wanted a united army.
>
>The future role of the pro-government southern 
>militias, mostly Nuer, is crucial for a lasting 
>peace, as this report illustrates. As of the 
>writing of this report, the parties to the peace 
>talks do not seem to have reached this vital 
>topic. The government-backed southern militias, 
>now organized under the umbrella of the SSDF, 
>are not party to the talks, and their political 
>counterparts, some of which are technically in 
>the government, have not been allowed to play 
>any role at the IGAD talks. An SSDF delegation 
>was permitted to attend security talks in April 
>2003 and tabled a proposal for three armies 
>during the interim period (the third being the 
>SSDF). This proposal was not discussed nor 
>addressed by the parties to the talks.
>
>The mostly Nuer militias remain a stumbling 
>block for the SPLM/A, which lays claim to govern 
>the entire south. These militias (or armed 
>groups, as they ask to be called) are also a 
>challenge to the government, which does not 
>trust them because they are southerners and 
>continue to insist on the right of 
>self-determination as outlined in the Khartoum 
>Peace Agreement of 1997. Although the SPLA seems 
>to have a position, from time to time, within 
>Block 5A sufficient to block its development, 
>the government militias are situated in 
>different parts of Blocks 1, 2, 4, 5A, and 5 in 
>Western Upper Nile/Unity State, and in Blocks 3 
>and 7 in the Melut Basin in Eastern Upper Nile 
>also. These areas have changed hands often, even 
>after the October 2002 ceasefire, demonstrating 
>the partiesí and the militiasí/armed groupsí 
>continued high interest in controlling the 
>valuable oil resource.
>
>If peace is reached, it should mean that there 
>will be no more fighting or displacement of 
>civilians from the oilfields or elsewhere, and 
>that the displaced may return to their homes. 
>Whether they will return with compensation for 
>the losses suffered and international monitoring 
>of the partiesí respect for human rights is not 
>yet known. The serious human rights abuses 
>detailed in this report have never been 
>accounted for by any of the parties to the 
>conflict.
>
>Nor is it clear that the fighting and the abuses 
>will end with a peace agreement. If peace means 
>that the SPLM/A is the sole government of the 
>southern region and it refuses to compromise or 
>reconcile with the other southern military and 
>political forces, it is likely that Sudanese 
>government hard-liners will continue to use the 
>SSDF militia/armed groups to foment war in the 
>southóin order to frustrate the goal of a 
>self-determination referendum. In these 
>circumstances, displacement and death in the oil 
>war will continue to be the fate of southern 
>Sudanese, even if a peace agreement is signed by 
>the Sudanese government and the SPLM/A.
>
>*************************************************************
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>************************************************************


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu