Elders’ Report on Sudan

Executive Summary

Click here to download the full Elders' Report (pdf)

Convened on July 18, 2007, in South Africa by Nelson Mandela, Graça Machel, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Elders include 10 other world leaders who have joined together to confront seemingly intractable crises and to share their wisdom on global challenges.

For its first mission, four of The Elders traveled to Sudan to assess the situation in Darfur and affirm the group’s support of the fragile peace negotiated between North and South Sudan in the two-year-old Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). We began our trip in Khartoum, where we met with Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir, other government officials, and representatives of opposition political parties, the United Nations, the African Union, the diplomatic community and international organizations, including humanitarian agencies. We then went on to Juba, where we met with the leadership of the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS). Finally, we flew to Darfur to meet with tribal leaders, women’s groups, civil society leaders, and internally displaced persons (IDPs). We sought the opinions of all we met and shared our own frank assessments with both the powerful and the powerless.

We learned that Sudan is at a turning point in its history. It could sink into a new spiral of violence if the CPA breaks down and if the conflict in Darfur worsens. Or it could follow the promise of the CPA and the bold statement of the United Nations in its Security Council Resolution 1769 and find its path to democracy and peace.

Click here to download the full Elders' Report (pdf)