The Nairobi Declaration.. Thank you, Hamdok, again!

Ali Ahmed writes… The Nairobi Declaration.. Thank you, Hamdok, again!

With the signing of the Nairobi Declaration -on Saturday- between the former Sudanese Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok, and head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North, Abdelaziz al-Hilu, as well as the head of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, Abdul Wahid Nur, under the patronage and in the presence of the Kenyan President William Ruto.

The Declaration urged both parties to the conflict to abide to a cease fire and work to end the war and achieve lasting peace. The possibility of achieving comprehensive and radical solutions to the Sudanese political crisis that has been continuously running rampant even prior to the Declaration of Independence in 1956, when the First Southern War broke out in 1955, has become more achievable than ever before.

Perhaps the most prominent aspect included in the Nairobi Declaration is the clear and unambiguous provisions in regard to working to comprehensively address Sudan’s cumulative crises, not through a traditional transitional process, but rather through a “founding process,” based on basic principles necessary to build a new State, which are; voluntary unity, establishing a secular, unbiased State that recognizes diversity and expresses all its components with equality and justice.
In addition to establishing a federal democratic civil rule, ensuring the separation of cultural, ethnic, religious and regional identities from the State (i.e. disengaging the link between identities and the State), addressing the issue of human rights violations through justice and historical accountability, and the right to self-determination for the Sudanese people, in case the process of including these principles into the Constitution fails.

However, the most important clause of the declaration, which reflects the three leaders’ deep understanding of the correct approach to implementing the other founding provisions, is what was stated in clause (4), which stipulates the following: “Establishing a new Military and Security Institution, in accordance with internationally agreed upon standards, that will lead to the formation of a professional and national Army, that adopts a new military doctrine, that is committed to protecting national security in accordance with the constitution, and is be loyal to the homeland, with a formation that expresses the entirety of Sudanese, in accordance with the criterion of the population census, and is completely removed from political work and economic activity.”

The declaration was integral and comprehensive as well as deserving of celebration and praise by every person calling for change, seeking democratic civil transformation, or fighting for freedom. There is no institution or entity like the military security system that has always represented a major obstacle to change, stability, and renaissance, practicing oppression, repression, and tyranny, sometimes as a tool in the hands of the ruling political elites, and often by the will and desire of the dominant military elites, when they blatantly lead political systems that lacks legitimacy.

As a result of the dominance, brutality and tyranny of the military establishment and its illegal control over the political and economic spheres, millions of Sudanese people have faced and are still facing -headed by the leaders Abdelaziz al-Hilu and Abdul Wahid Nur- numerous difficulties that negatively affects their lives, and some of them were forced to choose the path of struggle, revolution and change. Perhaps the Nairobi Declaration -as we hope – is one of the fruits of this choice.

We ought to pay tribute to the courage and wisdom of Dr. Abdullah Hamdok, the former Prime Minister, who with his usual and well-known patriotism overcame all the bitterness that the Military Institution inflicted on him that didn’t prevent him from moving forward in order to achieve peace and the civil-democratic transformation in the country.

Hamdok left Khartoum after achieving numerous achievements in terms of economic reform, removing Sudan from the list of States Sponsors of Terrorism, initiating its reintegration into the international financial system, and ensuring basic freedoms. But due of the brutality and recklessness of the leaders of this Army, this country’s residents have recently left because of the war that the same aforementioned people started.

Because the establishment of a respectable and stable Sudanese State on new foundations will not be possible in light of the continued existence of this defective military and security institution, which has claimed no job other than igniting civil wars, organizing military coups, and brandishing weapons on citizens who demand change.

The Nairobi Declaration acknowledged the necessity of establishing a new Military and Security Institution. As a necessary condition for establishing the desired new Sudan, a State of freedom, justice, citizenship, democracy, development, stability and prosperity.

Thank you, Hamdok, again.