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📄 APA-0003 Implemented

Comprehensive Peace Agreement (Naivasha Agreement)

Also known as: Sudan CPA

Country
Sudan
Region
East Africa
Date signed
9 January 2005
Type
Comprehensive Peace Agreement
Mediator(s)
IGAD (Kenya — Gen. Lazaro Sumbeiywo)

Ended Africa's longest-running civil war through wealth- and power-sharing, interim autonomy for Southern Sudan, and a self-determination referendum that produced South Sudan's independence in 2011.

Conflict Background

Built incrementally from the 2002 Machakos Protocol through six protocols covering power sharing, wealth sharing, security arrangements, and the contested areas of Abyei, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.

Negotiation Context

Two decades of war between Khartoum and the SPLM/A killed an estimated two million people. Oil discovered along the north–south seam made wealth sharing the settlement's load-bearing wall.

Parties

  • Government of Sudan
  • Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A)

Mediators & Guarantors

Mediators
  • · IGAD (Kenya — Gen. Lazaro Sumbeiywo)
Guarantors
  • · United Nations
  • · African Union
  • · Troika (US, UK, Norway)
  • · Egypt
  • · Italy
  • · Netherlands

Key Provisions

Six-year interim period with a Government of National Unity and an autonomous Government of Southern Sudan
50:50 sharing of oil revenue from southern fields
Joint Integrated Units and separate armies during the interim period
Self-determination referendum for Southern Sudan in 2011
Popular consultations for Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile; separate Abyei Protocol

Implementation

Fully executed in its core provisions and thereby concluded; its unfinished edges — Abyei, Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile — remain live conflict files inherited by later processes including the Juba Peace Agreement.

Timeline

  1. 2002-07-20
    Machakos Protocol establishes the self-determination principle
  2. 2005-01-09
    CPA signed in Nairobi
  3. 2005-07-30
    SPLM leader John Garang dies in a helicopter crash weeks after becoming First Vice-President
  4. 2011-01-09
    Referendum: 98.8% vote for secession
  5. 2011-07-09
    Republic of South Sudan proclaimed

Challenges

  • Abyei's final status never resolved; referendum for the area never held
  • Popular consultations in the Two Areas aborted, seeding renewed war there in 2011
  • 'Making unity attractive' abandoned in practice after Garang's death

Outcomes

  • Delivered its central promise — an on-time, credible referendum and a peaceful secession
  • Held a nationwide ceasefire between the principals for the full interim period
  • Set the continental benchmark for comprehensive, protocol-based mediation design

Lessons

  • Clear, dated, verifiable endpoints discipline implementation
  • Excluded regions become the next war: comprehensiveness of parties matters as much as comprehensiveness of issues
  • Leader succession planning is a neglected mediation variable

Related CRCA Resources

References

  • Government of Sudan & SPLM/A (2005). Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
  • Young, J. (2012). The Fate of Sudan: The Origins and Consequences of a Flawed Peace Process.