Peace brings new challenges in Sudan
28 April 2005
In February 2005, following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between North and South Sudan, USAID, through John Snow International, asked the Alliance to carry out a mission to South Sudan to assess the capacity of civil society to respond to HIV/AIDS following the 21 year civil war. Unfortunately, peace in Sudan may also bring with it the new challenge of HIV/AIDS.
Reliable data on HIV prevalence in Sudan is hard to come by, but it is believed to be between 3 and 6%. This rate is considerably lower than in the neighbouring countries of Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of the Congo because the war has restricted the movement of people. However, the onset of peace will increase the movement of populations from these higher prevalence countries as four million refugees return home and trade routes re-open. In some regions of Sudan, 97% of people have never even heard of HIV/AIDS. Without quick and properly targeted interventions, the HIV rate will inevitably rise.
Southern Sudan is ill prepared for this. There are currently just six indigenous doctors in the whole country working with extremely limited resources. HIV/AIDS programmes in the new Sudan are currently limited to voluntary counselling and testing; information, education and communication work; and a small amount of care and support. These are provided on a rather ad hoc basis by international relief agencies rather than indigenous organisations.
The Alliance has worked in post-conflict settings before: Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But South Sudan will still present challenges. The whole concept of civil society is a relatively new idea to South Sudan, which has been under the control of the Southern People’s Liberation Army for much of the last two decades. Indigenous non-governmental organisations are few and far between and of limited capacity. Work will be needed to develop the capacity of civil society to respond to HIV/AIDS in all aspects, from financial and organizational skills building to technical support for effective programming. The huge size of the region, with its limited infrastructure, also provides logistical difficulties in the provision of technical support.
Despite the pressing demands of nation building, there is strong political commitment to tackle HIV/AIDS straight away, from both the Sudanese Secretariat of Health and South Sudanese civil society. These challenges will require new strategies in which the Alliance will have to simultaneously work at building a conducive institutional environment for effective HIV/AIDS programming by civil society, and build its technical capacity to quickly respond to and scale-up an effective response to HIV/AIDS. The Alliance will start activities in the Equatoria region of South Sudan later this year.
