A peace deal that calmed Sudan is in threat of end­ing accord­ing to aid groups that work in the coun­try. A decades long civil war that killed 2.2 mil­lion peo­ple was ended by the peace agree­ment signed five years ago. New elec­tions being held this year and a surge of vio­lence from last year are fac­tors that threaten the peace accord.

From The Toronto Star, writer Olivia Ward recorded the aid coalition’s state­ment on Sudan.

“It is not yet too late to avert dis­as­ter but the next 12 months are a cross­roads,” said Maya Mailer, a pol­icy adviser for Oxfam, one of 10 agen­cies that banded together to sound the alarm in a report pub­lished Thursday.

“Last year saw a surge in vio­lence in south­ern Sudan. This could esca­late even fur­ther and become one of the biggest emer­gen­cies in Africa in 2010,” said Mailer, a co-author of the report.

In 2009, some 2,500 peo­ple were killed and 350,000 forced to flee their homes, in spite of the 2005 com­pre­hen­sive peace agree­ment that inte­grated the main south­ern rebel group into a gov­ern­ment of national unity.

The iso­lated area – with only 50 kilo­me­tres of paved road in a ter­ri­tory the size of France – is out of the world spot­light, it has suf­fered a higher toll of death and destruc­tion than Dar­fur in the past year.

“Gov­ern­ment author­i­ties and the UN peace­keep­ing mis­sion need to act urgently to pro­tect civil­ians from vio­lence,” the report says. Dimin­ished secu­rity has dis­rupted liveli­hoods, stalled devel­op­ment and cut off thou­sands from much needed aid.

It urges UN coun­tries, as well as the gov­ern­ments of Sudan and south­ern Sudan, to work together to beef up secu­rity, pro­tect civil­ians and boost resources for emer­gency aid and devel­op­ment. A for­mi­da­ble task in a coun­try headed by an accused war crim­i­nal who last year expelled some of the largest aid agen­cies from Darfur.

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