Human rights
In 2009, the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for then Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for alleged war crimes in Darfur. In 2010 this was expanded to include genocide. Omar al-Bashir was the only incumbent head of state against whom a genocide case was pending at the ICC. For some years now, the ICC has issued arrest warrants for the former interior minister and current governor of South Kordofan Ahmad Harun and a former leader of the Janjaweed militia. Against the former defense minister, Abdul Rahim Hussein. In March 2012, the ICC issued an arrest warrant in connection with war crimes in Darfur.
At the end of 2014, the ICC stopped the investigation into the war crimes in Darfur due to a lack of support from the international community for an arrest of al-Bashir. The proceedings have so far been considered to have finally failed. Al-Bashir’s continued stays abroad demonstrated the weakness of the ICC, especially in Africa.
According to dentistrymyth, the human rights situation in Sudan is showing positive signals in terms of the consolidation of human rights after the transitional government came to power. The former government and government-affiliated organizations are accused of systematically disregarding the most basic human rights. The work of human rights organizations has often been banned and activists have mostly fled abroad.
Sudan is one of the countries in which the death penalty is used and a sentence by stoning can also be imposed. However, no more death sentences have been carried out since 2017.
In 2014, the death penalty for the “apostasy” of a Sudanese woman who was raised as a Christian by her mother in the absence of her Muslim father and married a Christian from South Sudan received a great deal of media attention. According to Sharia law in force in Sudan, the children of Muslim men are automatically Muslim and a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man. She was able to leave the country after international protests.
The “public order” laws after which especially the Sudanese women who were arbitrarily arrested have now been abolished by the interim government.
After the 2010 elections and before the referendum on the secession of South Sudan temporarily eased the human rights situation, freedom of expression and assembly was again drastically restricted, especially in response to the wave of protests over the increase in fuel prices in 2012. The national secret service NISS enforced strong press censorship and reacted to demonstrations with waves of arrests.
The human rights situation has been exacerbated by the armed conflicts in Darfur and in the border regions with South Sudan. The Sudanese army in particular is accused of systematic attacks on the civilian population as a central strategy of warfare. So the Sudanese air force repeatedly bombed villages. Next set of sexual violence in conflict zones by militias of the government and the Sudanese army and the recruitment of child soldiers, especially by the various rebel organizations, has long been an immense problem. In May 2015, the most important rebel organizations declared at a conference that they would comply with the relevant international resolutions on the protection of children. However, the real goal of the conference, which took place under the mediation of the UN, to end the recruitment of child soldiers, has not been achieved. The Sudanese government had been slow to comply with the 2010 commitment to end the recruitment of child soldiers. The current transitional government wants to curb this practice further.
Child labor is widespread in Sudan. In rural areas, children work in agriculture and as cattle herders, and in cities they often have to contribute to the family budget through work in the informal sector.
Sudan ranks 14th out of 167 nations on the biennial Global Slavery Index in 2018, as it is estimated that almost half a million people live in slavery-like dependency relationships.
Corruption
Sudan is classified as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Thus the country is ranked in the Corruption Perceptions Index of Transparency International by world standards for years traditionally on the bottom of the ranking, currently zuammen with Afghanistan on the sixth-last place, with only 16 of 100 possible points. Only Yemen, Syria, neighboring South Sudan and Somalia in last place are rated even worse.
Corruption is omnipresent in the country and pervades all sectors of the economy and the state apparatus. Most of the Sudanese complain about corruption in the police and authorities. The Sudanese police force is ranked among the ten most corrupt police forces in the world. A lucrative business means, for example, cashing in to cover illegal alcohol production from mostly non-Arab women who, as internally displaced persons, want to run a profitable business with it in the cities of the country.
After the former President al-Bashir set up an anti-corruption agency in early 2012, its chairman was dismissed after a year for inactivity and his post has not been refilled to this day. Instead, the Sudanese government set up a commission of inquiry to first examine press releases accusing public officials of corruption. Even a group of MPs warned the government and business about the extent of corruption.
Given the parlous economic situation, the then Sudanese President repeated yet in 2018 its rather half-hearted challenge to the corruption, which is of opposition voices were accordingly viewed critically.
After the overthrow of President al-Bashir in April 2019 and his imprisonment, he now finds himself in a corruption process.
