YouSaid · the spoken record

Kholood Khair

lines on the record
15
first
2021-03-09
most recent
2021-03-09
sittings or episodes
1
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un-security-council

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  1. “Ultimately UNITAM’s success will be the Sudan’s success, if the Mission is cognizant and inclusive of civil society as the bedrock of the democratic project. This inclusion of civil society must be done in such a way that it increases, not limits, civic space, and efforts must be made not to undermine the fragile and inchoate social contract between the civilian Government and the public.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  2. “UNITAMS should also work with a dedicated governmental counterpart that is answerable to the Cabinet, not a committee that functions as a secretariat, which will act as a platform to build consensus within the Government, absorb international support, encourage joined-up policymaking through the Cabinet, and later with the Parliament, while providing a liaising body for efficient coordination; coordinate with parallel processes outside of its mandate but whose success is interlinked with its own, such as transitional justice and reforms; be better funded, and channel that funding wisely, to allow for a better and more meaningfully integrated response to transition needs; seize the opportunity to refine and focus its broad mandate in May of this year; and lastly, and importantly, recruit more senior national staff, particularly from the peripheries.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  3. “I believe that, to be effective to aptly support the transition and get the buy-in of civil society as a key transition partner, UNITAMS should consult regularly and meaningfully with different and diverse civil society actors across the country in its planning and strategizing for its work during the transition; work with what is left of UNAMID while it can and enlist its on-the-ground civil society partners to look into how it will prioritize protection of civilians, while conflict flares up in Darfur and matters look increasingly bellicose in the east; be agile enough to respond to ad hoc issues while planning a phased approach in a holistic strategy of transition priorities, from, for example, the protection of civilians to access to justice and rule of law, elections and then the credible transition of power; be a mission for the entire country, with context-specific strategies for the different political realities across the Sudan drafted in close collaboration with civil society actors from research- and area-specific communities, including rural communities pastoralists.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  4. “The foregoing will allow the Government, for example, to increase the level of representation of women in line with its own quotas and catalyse some of the slow progress that has been observed on such key issues as justice. It will also allow for better feedback from the public. Currently, mass protest against specific issues is the only form of communication that much of civil society has with the Government, which can give the impression that the Government is failing across the board, thereby emboldening factions of the ancien régime.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  5. “For its part, the civilian Government should recognize that a broad and varied civil society is its army and its domestic support system in the fight against autocracy; expand its transition priorities and mitigate its capacity issues by working with civil society, particularly outside of Khartoum; learn the lessons of previous transitions and broaden the political space to a more diverse range of constituencies S/2021/246 and avoid redrawing the fault lines between political groups based on competition for power and resources; and rely less on personal politics and institutionalize some of its engagement with civil society.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  6. “Crucial State-building exercises that finally have some hope of being credible — for example, the constitution-drafting processes, election-related initiatives and making the peace deal viable — are all currently led by international actors, with civil society playing a supporting role. This should be the reverse. Sustainability is an ever-present concern, and only increased and broad civil society engagement with both the Government and the United Nations can facilitate enhanced Government- United Nations cooperation.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  7. “Civil society actors can bolster and even lead coordinated efforts in the difficult work of ensuring the protection of civilians, a key priority in parts of Darfur right now, and make use of over a decade of civil society engagement on protection of civilians, peacebuilding initiatives and conflict prevention across the country. Engaging civil society actors is also crucial ahead of elections, and it needs to start now, preferably at the local level, in order to demonstrate the value of a process that has suffered much public disparagement from its nominal implementation during the Al-Bashir regime.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  8. “If the fate of the success of UNITAMS is directly tied to the Government’s ability to implement — an ability that is impeded by several factors, not least competing interests within the broader Government for capacity and funding — then UNITAMS will not be able to play as supportive a role as it would like. And therein lies the contradiction of an integrated mission intended to support a less- than-integrated Government — in fact a divided one, and not only along civilian and military lines but also along rebel lines.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  9. “The challenges specifically related to these governance dynamics are, broadly speaking, how UNITAMS will be both the follow-on mission to UNAMID as well as a mission with a wholly different mandate — one that, crucially, does not contain as many provisions for the protection of civilians as the previous missions did, which is nevertheless an increasingly urgent priority in Darfur and elsewhere; how UNITAMS will build consensus across its broad mandate with the different strands and structures of Government as well as with such alternative governance structures as the native administrations and resistance committees, both at the national and subnational levels; how the Mission, as a political mission, will resist co-optation by different political interests both within Government and outside of it; how UNITAMS will manage the very great expectations of both the Government and the public; how UNITAMS will balance role assignments: without a strong governmental counterpart, and a reliance instead on the Cabinet as a counterpart, the Sudanese public may not know where the Government starts and UNITAMS ends, which will not help the Government to build the relationship it wants and needs to build with the public; and lastly, how UNITAMS will work to fulfil its objectives beyond directly supporting the Government, such as through highly specialized disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programming.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  10. “In addition, there are some not insignificant concerns on the impact of this tumult on the civil society space as the foundation of the democratic transition.S/2021/246 Within the as-yet unclear terms of engagement between the civilian Government and UNITAMS, a mission upon which civilians may increasingly heavily rely, there must be due consideration of what the impact on civil society space might be and consequently the building of a burgeoning social contract. In this regard, chiefly, UNITAMS must learn the lessons of the missions that came before it, the United Nations Mission in the Sudan and the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID).”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  11. “In order to do that, there are several issues related to the operationalization of a mission such as UNITAMS that will need to be addressed so as to ensure civil society buy-in. The Mission itself has been up and running for just over two months, and the eventual start of its activities is welcome. However, since the Mission’s inception, some challenges have been apparent. Most of these challenges are related to potential difficulties in navigating the Sudan’s enduring power imbalance at the heart of Government, between, broadly, armed components and civilian components.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  12. “From women’s rights groups, resistance committees and research centres to women’s community initiatives and organizations fighting for justice, the reach of civil society is often vastly wider than the State’s, and significantly deeper than that of international actors. Over the past few years, the country’s civil society has responded to local demands for change and created more space for meaningful grass-roots engagement outside of the aid space. After decades of resistance against autocracy and of heavy suppression under the previous regime, civil society, in many of its guises, must now be given the room to function as is absolutely necessary: as a key partner in the civilian transition.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  13. “Previous experience with transition — and the Sudan has been here before, after all — tells us that transitions live and die by the space that diverse civil society actors are able to carve out at the national, subnational and local levels. We are learning from the past. This time around, a more concerted effort by transition partners aimed at engaging civil society consistently and intentionally across governance structures — from supporting the Federal Government to maintaining momentum in neighbourhoods — is the best chance that we have. Let us hope that the third time is the charm, as we may not get another opportunity such as this one anytime soon. Sudanese civil society is a broad umbrella, and that is its strength.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  14. “It is also a recognition of the leading role that Sudanese civil society continuously played in the run-up to the 2018 revolution and continues to play throughout the fragile transition. This transition is not merely about the mechanics of civilian democratization; it is also about engendering the governance practices necessary for a vibrant democracy. The past 30 years saw a tireless and sustained attempt to limit civil space in order to control and coerce the Sudanese people. Undoing this will necessitate similarly tireless and sustained engagement with civil society actors in order to expand the civic space. Only then will the national projects of “civilianizing” and democratizing the Sudan stand a chance of success.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source

  15. “My name is Kholood Khair, and I am a researcher and analyst running a think tank in Khartoum and a broadcaster on a political talk show. Although civil society is not homogenous, I hope to shed some light on the possible implications of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in the Sudan (UNITAMS) on the civil society space in my country and the importance of civil society buy-in during the transition period. First, I must thank the organizers for giving a voice from Sudanese civil society the space to be heard at a meeting like this one. It is a very welcome and necessary affirmation of the role of civil society in “civilianizing” the Sudan and helping the country make the transition into democratic governance.”

    2021-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/246 (2021) · source