Nairobi Declaration: From Division to Self-Determination

🖋By: Ibrahim Al-Tayeb Al-Jilani

Abdullah Hamdouk, in his personal capacity, signed the Nairobi Declaration with the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) led by Abdel Wahid Mohamed Nour on 18/05/2024. The most prominent provisions of the agreement are:
1/ Secularism of the state.
2/ Building a new army.
3/ The right to self-determination for the peoples of Sudan.
4/ Approval of a foundational stage for building the state.
There are observations and readings worth making about the Nairobi Declaration in order to draw lessons and benefits and gain insight into the reality and consequences. Hopefully, we will realize with sufficient awareness what the political arena needs at the present time in terms of taking the right and correct ways and means for a comprehensive political solution, which will bring the country out of the furnace of raging war.
First: The agreement was signed between secular-oriented parties working to exclude and remove any manifestation of religion in Sudanese public life.
Second: The two parties resolved all controversial issues without the presence of political forces that agreed and disagreed with the direction of the two parties signatory to the (Declaration), which calls for further division towards steps of a unilateral nature.
Third: The Declaration seeks to impose a fait accompli policy by anticipating the founding conference of (Taqaddum), which puts the conference in front of two options: either a fingerprint, support, or applause inside the hall, as happened and always happens in conferences of FFC and Taqaddum, in a duplicate version of political unrest. In this case, the conference becomes formal and decorative. Without a real practice of democracy, or the signing step will lead to the division of the internal front of (Taqaddum) or the preservation of some of its components, which will create distances between its components. This unilateral behavior in decision-making has been constantly complaining about by some of the components influencing Taqaddum and previously, and in order to reform it, they have submitted many memorandums and correspondences to address the control of decisions by a few coalition members, which exposes an arena of Taqaddum to fracture and erosion from within, and instead of moving towards expansion, the Front retreats to further division.
Fourth: The issues raised in the Declaration are crucial issues that are disputed in the Sudanese arena. This disagreement led to the division of the arena, which led the country to a series of armed conflicts of an ideological and ethnic nature, and the war that the country is experiencing now is one of the results of those differences that require a comprehensive vision and a comprehensive view for the solution, which is what the signed Declaration between Hamdouk and the Sudan Liberation Movement misses
Fifth: The Nairobi Declaration is seen as being directed at opponents rather than being a step towards a comprehensive political solution, which makes it lose its future impact and effectiveness, as it is seen as nothing more than an agreement between left-leaning and secular-minded people (Hamdouk actually signed such an agreement during his presidency of the Council of Ministers). ..
Sixth: The political arena is witnessing an almost complete consensus regarding all political parties sitting in (a constitutional conference, a round table, or a founding conference), whatever the name that is agreed upon, to sit and reach a comprehensive political solution to all the crucial issues of the state without preconditions or pressures… and this declaration, as it contains, There are conditions that block the path to consensus steps and the unconditional seating of political parties and blocs.
Based on the previous observations, we can reach some results and conclusions that we can summarize in:
1/ The signatory with a previous constitutional capacity (Hamdouk) does not have a constitutional capacity that entitles him to agree on issues that have an impact on national security and the structure, entity and unity of the state, especially if the one who signed with him was an armed faction rebelling against the state..
2/ The course of the declaration in the bilateral decision, conditional on imposing the option of self-determination without regard to the opinion of the people, behavior that indicates the guardianship to which the declaration tended, and it is a repetition of the scene (framework or war) and the Nairobi Declaration tends to have the same meaning (implementing what was stated in the declaration of secularism and others or a self-determination) means the same singing with a different melody, which puts the Declaration in the circle of a hidden threat to all political forces and the Sudanese people to accept and submit to what was stated in the Declaration or go for the option of self-determination, and in fact it is the right of those who do not own the homeland (Hamdouk) to sign such an unfair Declaration against the Sudanese people for those who dealt with the matter opportunistically to achieve political gain, taking advantage of the crisis of political reality…
3/ Agreements and declarations of a bilateral nature complicate the political scene and do not contribute much to the solution, especially if their purpose is (to increase the size of the allies and nothing more). Rather, they make exploiters of opportunities and those seeking to achieve narrow political gains exploit the state of polarization in the political arena, and this is what the Nairobi Declaration did, complicating the scene. It is not contributing to the improvement of the Sudanese scene, and it is behavior that must be condemned, regardless of which party it came from or will come from in the future, whether right, moderate, or left.
4/ The declaration responded, in fact, to all the demands of the Sudan Liberation Movement with complete ease, within only two days, without any indications that could be read in the declaration indicating that the movement had made concessions that required signing this agreement, knowing that the program of the liberation movement itself was disputed, even within society of Darfur and rejected by large ethnic, cultural, social and political components, not to mention the rest of the Sudanese people who have an opposing position to the movement’s ideological orientations and political discourse, which makes what the declaration approved in the crosshairs of Darfuri and popular criticism and rejection.
Politicians must be sufficiently aware of the dimensions of the armed conflicts in the country, especially Darfur, so that such agreements do not exacerbate the crisis or deepen the gap between the crisis and the solution.
5/ The political realization that the solution lies in the seating of all representatives of political components, especially those with different and conflicting visions and perceptions, and not in the seating of parties with a common or compatible vision, which requires a degree of openness towards the other and patience to conduct a comprehensive dialogue to resolve this Sudanese crisis, or all of these efforts becomes like plowing in the sea or writing in the air whiche are useless and have no result
The bottom line regarding bilateral declarations and agreements between political entities and armed militias is that it is a distinctly Sudanese case that has serious consequences for political action. The country is still suffering from this behavior, which has greatly harmed the Sudanese people, and this behavior needs to be highlighted, condemned, fought, and its practitioners exposed and exposed for the sake of recovery and health. Political work in the country and the effects of this practice are:
It is harmful to the political situation and increases the complexity and aggravation of the scene more than it is a contribution to the political solution
This type of political behavior may be exploited by internal and external parties whose interest is the instability of the political situation in the country
This behavior is far from rational political practice that leads to good governance.
It turns armed action into a pressure card in political action through political exploitation that is destructive to political life
We find that the armed movements benefit from this behavior more than the political parties and blocs, even if they match in terms of political principles and vision.
The Nairobi Declaration is a dangerous precedent in recognizing the right to self-determination of the peoples of Sudan, including Darfur. This declaration should be called a disaster declaration that came to address the cumulative crises, as it increases the crises into a new disaster, which is tantamount to pouring oil of divisions on the fire of conflicts, and the wheel of disastrous mistakes continues in the Sudanese politics orbit, and from this standpoint, we can say that an armed movement won and Sudan lost, not through the barrel of a gun, but through political hands.