Church leaders call for immediate oil moratorium in Sudan
Imposing an international government moratorium on oil development in the war-ravaged Sudan would go a long way towards promoting peace, say several Canadian church leaders recently returned from the area.
According to members of the Canadian Ecumenical Mission to Sudan, "The Canadian government should take high-level diplomatic and practical initiatives to support African nations in bringing about a speedy end to a vicious and brutal civil war."
The group, representing the Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches as well as the Inter-Church Coalition on Africa, Canadian Council of Churches and Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, spent a week in April visiting areas of southern Sudan.
The group is concerned about the ongoing development of oilfields in southern Sudan, including operations by Calgary's Talisman Energy, which has generated $400 million from its Sudanese oilfields in the last year and a half. Some of the oil revenues go to the government of Sudan and help fund the ongoing civil war.
Although Talisman released its Corporate Social Responsibility Report April 10, which focuses on the company's Sudan operations and in part evaluates the company's progress in the areas of human rights and community development, it has been criticized by human rights organizations and aid agencies of ignoring many of the abuses by the Khartoum government.
A moratorium on oil development has to be an international effort, says Janet Somerville, general secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches. "Just to get one oil company out of there wouldn't substantially change the situation for the Sudanese," she says. "Develop the oil in Sudan, but not until there is a peace treaty and a political structure that north and south can live with."
Somerville was part of the group invited to the region by the Sudan and the New Sudan Councils of Churches. They visited Canadian diplomats, NGOs, refugee camps and humanitarian relief programs.
The two objectives of the trip were to "demonstrate the solidarity of the Canadian churches with the suffering church and people of Sudan" and to "use the experiences of the visit to mobilize support by the Canadian churches and their members, all citizens and the government for more effective Canadian policies on Sudan."
A full report is being prepared, calling for additional measures including:
• a moratorium on all aspects of oil development in Sudan…until a just peace is negotiated;
• additional support to the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development;
• stronger legislation preventing corporations from exploiting situations of conflict for financial gain;
• condemnation of human rights violations by all parties in the conflict;
• increased pressure to end the use of starvation as a weapon of war and guarantee the unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid to all war-affected people in the country;
• more health and developmental resources to be made available to communities throughout Sudan.
Bill Phipps, past moderator for the United Church of Canada and international president of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, was also in the Sudan, and acknowledges there are no easy answers to the complex problems.
"You can't characterize this in one or two sentences, here are the good guys and here are the bad guys," he says. "But that doesn't mean there's not some things we can do. We're hoping these recommendations we brought back are steps to making some kind of an impact."
There has been war in the Sudan since the 1950s. Various human rights organizations have reported systematic bombings, use of child soldiers, attacks on civilian targets, mass starvation and other acts of terrorism. More than two million people have been killed and more than four million displaced in the current civil war, which began in 1983.
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