Observation (CEACR) - adopted 1996, published 85th ILC session (1997)

Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) - Sudan (Ratification: 1957)
Protocol of 2014 to the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 - Sudan (Ratification: 2021)

1. The Committee has noted the Government's reply to its observation made in 1994 and the Government's report received 18 October 1996 on the application of the Convention. It also has taken note of the report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Sudan submitted to the Fifty-second Session of the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (document E/CN.4/1996/62 of 20 February 1996) and the Government's response contained in a letter dated 29 March 1996 from the Permanent Representative of the Sudan to the UN Office at Geneva (document E/CN.4/1996/145). The Committee further has taken note of a communication dated 1 August 1996 by which the World Confederation of Labour submitted comments on the application of the Convention, including a number of documents published by Human Rights Watch and Christian Solidarity International and articles published in The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Times. A copy of this communication was dispatched to the Government on 27 August 1996. The Committee notes that no comments have been received from the Government on the matters raised by the World Confederation of Labour.

Previous observation and the Government's reply

2. In its 1994 observation, the Committee took note of the report on the situation of human rights in the Sudan by the Special Rapporteur who visited the country in September and December 1993. (Commission on Human Rights, Fiftieth Session, 1994; document E/CN.4/1994/48 of 1 February 1994.) In the report the Special Rapporteur, referring to slavery, servitude, slave trade, forced labour, and similar institutions and practices, declared that reports and eye-witness accounts revealed a great deal of consistency with regard to the circumstances of abduction, the locations of destinations, the names of locations, where children and women are said to be kept in special camps, and where people from the northern Sudan, or even from abroad, reportedly come to buy some of these people. Sale or traffic of children seemed to be an organized and politically motivated activity, of mass character, on the level of non-regular armed forces, like the Popular Defence Forces and contingents of mujahidin in the conflict zones in southern Kordofan and Bahr El-Ghazal. The Special Rapporteur had received persistent reports and testimonies of abductions of children such as the abduction in summer 1993 of some 217 children, mainly Dinka. Referring to the fear of the population that these children had been sold as slaves in Darfur and northern Kordofan, he stated that the Government had taken no measure to investigate this case either at federal or at local level.

3. The Committee further noted the indications in the report that in September 1992 the authorities in the State of Khartoum launched a campaign of "cleaning" the city of vagrant children, collected in a systematic way and taken to camps. While the authorities claimed that children received vocational training, the Special Rapporteur concluded that the practice of collecting up street children was in fact mostly a case of arbitrary arrest and detention without due process of law. The treatment in the camps was very harsh. Non-governmental sources told the Special Rapporteur that a large number of the children, in majority southerners, mainly from Dinka, Shilluk and Nuer tribes, or from families displaced from the Nuba Mountains, were receiving military training and sent to the front.

4. Having noted that under section 163 of the 1991 Criminal Act, "whoever commits forced labour on any person by unlawfully compelling him to work against his will shall be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or with a fine or with both", the Committee recalled that Article 25 of the Convention makes it an obligation on any Member ratifying the Convention to ensure that the penalties imposed by law for the illegal exaction of forced labour are really adequate and are strictly enforced. Consequently, the Committee requested the Government to provide full information on measures taken or envisaged to ensure the practical application of Article 25 of the Convention, and on measures taken to protect the Dinka and Nuba populations against practices contrary to the Convention.

5. In its reply to the Committee's previous observation, the Government stated that the Special Rapporteur had based his report on unfounded information, which made his report unreasonable, incredible and dishonest. This was illustrated by one example where he depended on previous allegations of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. He also explicitly endorsed the statements of persons with political motives - probably persons who did not even exist. He did not refer in his report to specific persons or authorities as sources of his information, and often attributed the commission of all acts to unknown persons, thus adopting the same method and attitude as those adopted by the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in formulating accusations and false allegations against Sudan; these were all oral statements not based on any evidence.

6. The Government had previously replied in detail to the allegations of forced labour and slave trading referred to in documents E/CN.4/Sub/A(21)1987/71Add.1 and E/CN.4/Sub.2/1988/32. Both documents referred to the existence of slavery, slave trade, abduction of women in the southern part of Sudan among Dinka, Shilluk and Nuer peoples and the tribes of the Nuba Mountains. The Government referred the Committee to the report which contains its reply to the Special Rapporteur's allegations. Indeed, it was regrettable that the Rapporteur's report was based, as he himself stated, on reports and stories narrated by eye-witnesses, that is, on oral statements not acceptable from the Government's point of view; he had not reported a single event which he was able to say he witnessed or investigated himself.

7. As to the Rapporteur's visit to the street children's camps, and his allegations that such camps were but an excuse for arbitrary detentions and imprisonments, the Government's answer was that the problem of street children was faced by many other countries as well. The Government was applying a strategy which began with a search for the children's parents and ended with the return of these children to them. However, there were some children who preferred to live in the streets, lapsed into delinquency and refused to return to their homes. The Government had to take care of this category. The right to shelter was a human right, and street children were eminently eligible to enjoy it. The camps were not a place of arbitrary detention for those children, but a place to protect them and take care of them with the aim to educate and train them to be good members of society.

8. As to the Committee's request to take measures to protect the Dinka and Nuba populations against practices contrary to the Convention, the Government stressed that all Sudanese enjoy equal rights and protection without any discrimination.

1996 report of the Special Rapporteur and the Government's reply

9. The Committee has taken due note of these indications. It also notes that in his report on the situation of human rights in the Sudan, submitted 20 February 1996, the Special Rapporteur expressed his regret at the lack of interest shown by the competent Sudanese authorities with regard to the investigation of the cases brought to their attention over the past years, and also his concern that since February 1994 there had been an alarming increase in the number of reports and information emanating from a wide variety of sources on cases of slavery, servitude, the slave trade and forced labour. Although the Bahr El-Ghazal and Nuba Mountains area were the most affected by these phenomena, reports were received from all over southern Sudan of the abduction of men, women and children by the Sudanese army, the Popular Defence Forces (PDF), government armed local militia and groups of mujahidin fighting the war in southern Sudan on the Government's side. The abduction of southern civilians, men, women and children, whether Muslims, Christians or of traditional African beliefs, regardless of their social status or ethnic belonging, had become a way of conducting the war. During his fact-finding mission, the Special Rapporteur received detailed testimonies on regular abductions that had taken place in Gogrial and the surrounding locations during joint incursions by the army, PDF and armed militia, involving, at various dates between April 1994 and July 1995, the capture, detention and deportation to northern Sudan of civilians ranging in numbers from individual men to groups of several hundreds of women and children. Similarly, following an attack on 21 February 1995 by the government army on the village of Toror, Umgurban county, in the Nuba Mountains, it was reported that at least 250 civilians were abducted by soldiers. Relatives believe that those abducted were taken to one of the "peace villages" in Kordofan: Um Dorein, Agab or Um Sirdiba.

10. According to the Special Rapporteur, all the reports and information received indicated the direct and general involvement of the government army, PDF, government armed militia and mujahidin groups, backed by the Government of the Sudan and fighting beside the army and the paramilitary units, in the abduction and deportation of civilians from the conflict zones to northern Sudan. The places where those captured are temporarily detained before reaching their final destinations were also operated by army, PDF and/or mujahidin units. In the light of this information, the Special Rapporteur concluded that the total passivity of the Government after having received information for years regarding this situation could only be interpreted as tacit political approval and support of the institution of slavery and the slave trade. Repeated reports had indicated the involvement of local wealthy civilians, often well known for their close relations with the Government. All these practices had a pronounced racial aspect, as the victims were exclusively southerners and persons belonging to the indigenous tribes of the Nuba Mountains. Among the latter group, even Muslims were enslaved.

11. As regards more particularly the abduction of children, the Special Rapporteur indicated that some of the boys abducted from southern Sudan, as well as those rounded up from the streets of northern towns, were used as servants, while the girls became concubines or wives, mainly of soldiers and PDF members in northern Sudan. Another category of children, especially Dinka boys as young as 11 or 12, reportedly received military training and were sent by the Government of the Sudan to fight the war in southern Sudan. A further aspect that made the differentiation necessary was that children in the first category were, in a few cases, retrieved by their relatives and after long negotiations and after compensation had been paid to the captors were reunited with their families.

12. In its response of 29 March 1996 to the report of the Special Rapporteur the Government, recalling its earlier reservations against the Special Rapporteur, stated that it was not appropriate for the Special Rapporteur to raise the allegations contained in his recent report, including the finding that there was a tacit political approval to the practice of slavery, which he had previously failed to substantiate even after having visited the Sudan three times. The Government further stated that the Special Rapporteur had failed to establish, through the allegations and the hearsay evidence he had compiled in his report, that the right of ownership contemplated by the different international instruments on the subject had ever been exercised with the knowledge of the authorities in the Sudan over any individual in any part of the country. Moreover, Article 7 of the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery defined slave trade "as acts involved in the capture, acquisition, or disposal of a person with intent to reduce him to slavery ...", i.e. that the element of intention was decisive. In the Sudanese tribal fights, which normally resulted in captives and prisoners of war on both sides of the conflict, there was no such intention, since the fights would only break out to get more pasture and water for the cattle and not to collect slaves.

13. In this regard, the Committee notes that in his report of 20 February 1996 the Special Rapporteur already commented on the alleged misrepresentation of tribal disputes involving the capture of some members of the other tribe pending settlement of the dispute. According to the Special Rapporteur, in most of the cases brought to the attention of the Government of the Sudan, the reported perpetrators belong to the Sudanese army and the Popular Defence Forces (PDF), which are under the control of the Government of the Sudan. Even in the cases involving members of different tribal militia, the slavery occurred within the context of the war and indicated a deliberate policy on the part of the Government to ignore or even condone this practice of slavery as a way of fighting the civil war by other means. Moreover, the argument that these practices occur on a tribal basis did not exonerate the Government from its responsibility of assuring the right to life, security and freedom of its citizens.

14. With regard to the involvement of the paramilitary forces, including the Popular Defence Forces, in the slavery practices described by the Special Rapporteur, the Government stated in its response of 29 March 1996 that the Special Rapporteur was ill-advised and that the reports given to him in relation to these forces were intended to mislead him. In fact, these forces were carrying on a noble mission of protecting the relief routes and fighting banditry and outlaws who regularly interfered with the relief operations.

15. Similarly, with regard to the abduction of children, the Government stated that the issue was not true and was either created by the Special Rapporteur or by the sources who provided him with the information. But if he had provided specific names of persons engaged in such illegal practices the Government would not have hesitated in taking immediate legal action against the persons involved, especially that the crime of abduction was punishable under the Sudanese Penal Code.

WCL comments and the Government's report

16. The Committee takes due note of these indications. It also has taken note of the comments made by the World Confederation of Labour in its communication dated 1 August 1996 and of the documents included. The WCL states that according to the information in their possession, slavery and forced labour persist in the Sudan, contrary to Convention No. 29 ratified in 1957; that militia groups, often with the approval of the authorities, continue attacking villages, stealing cattle, burning houses and abducting civilians - men, women and children - forcing them subsequently to work as slaves employed in the household, in agriculture or keeping livestock, that living and working conditions are terrible and that moreover, the victims are often maltreated, and the women raped. The WCL draws attention, in particular, to the testimony given in the 1995 report by Human Rights Watch on Children of Sudan - slaves, street children and child soldiers, which contradicts the Government's statements mentioned in the Committee's 1994 observation.

17. The Committee notes from the report by Human Rights Watch that it is based on research conducted in May and June 1995 in Khartoum, at the invitation of the Sudanese Government, and in March 1995 in Kenya and southern Sudan; that interviews in Khartoum were conducted in private with non-governmental people and agencies who requested anonymity for fear of government reprisals, while interviews in Juba, the largest town in the south, were controlled by Sudan security which terminated the visit before testimony regarding most abuses could be gathered in that town.

18. In its report, Human Rights Watch indicates that Arab militia, which have under the current Government been loosely incorporated into the Popular Defence Forces (PDF), were armed for the purpose of defeating the rebel SPLA by attacking its alleged social base in southern Kordofan and northern Bahr El-Ghazal, within raiding distance of the Arab raiders. The targets were principally the Nuba and Dinka peoples which to some extent were traditional rivals of the Arab tribes. In addition to being effectively licensed by state and federal governments to attack these civilians with impunity, the Arab militia were permitted to loot cattle, burn property, and take civilians captive. Army soldiers and officers as well as militia have captured and kept civilians as personal household slaves. These civilians, mostly women and children, were not captured for the purpose of criminal prosecution by the authorities. Nor were they captured as hostages in tribal negotiations. They were taken as war booty. They ended up far from their villages of origin, performing unpaid household labour and herding animals; some were sexually abused by their masters. The researchers had only the stories of those who managed to escape or were freed, who represented the tip of the iceberg. Many captured women and children were not bought or sold but simply kept by the soldiers or militia members who captured them. Although the current practices in Sudan did not include all characteristics of slavery, they did include several: slaves were outsiders, alien by origin (southern and Nuba African peoples), coercion could be used on them at will, and their labour power was at the complete disposal of a master. A group case described had a fortunate ending for the more than 500 captured women and children: a southern police officer was able to detach them from their military captors when they passed through his jurisdiction. Other cases illustrated, however, that those saved by official intervention continue to be in the minority. The report gives accounts of several group cases, as well as summaries of the testimonies of some of the individual victims of other raids, and of the people who helped them. The researchers found cases of children who were located after years by their families, or who succeeded in escaping. The families had to undertake the search themselves, with governmental assistance only where they chanced upon southerners among the police officers they met in their search. It was clear that existing legal remedies were not adequate to promptly free all of the stolen children. While in some cases described, legal procedures (administrative or judicial) eventually led to reunification of the child with his or her family, the legal route was costly and often fruitless.

19. In its report, Human Rights Watch also indicates that under-age boys have been drafted as soldiers and required to fight in the army or in government-sponsored militia, in violation of Sudanese law which sets 18 as the minimum age. In one case, a 10 year-old Dinka boy had been drafted into a Mundari tribal militia by government forces in 1991 and kept in service until he escaped in 1995. The rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and the South Sudan Independence Army (SSIA) also continued to recruit under-age soldiers while at the same time the SSIA cooperated with the UNICEF family reunification programme.

20. The Committee has further taken note of various reports and documents by "Christian Solidarity International", also referred to by the WCL. Evidence on Slavery, with Special Reference to Young Mothers and Children in Sudan, submitted in April 1996 by the Baroness Cox and John Eibner to the UN Commission on Human Rights, is stated to be based on first-hand experiences obtained during eight visits to Sudan between 1993 and 1996. Since the 1995 meeting of the Commission on Human Rights, the CSI delegates have undertaken three fact-finding missions to northern Bahr El-Ghazal to investigate reports by the Special Rapporteur drawing attention to the continuing practice in Sudan of chattel slavery involving children and related practices, such as the forcible placement of boys into military service, with 9,034 being kept in 20 detention centres in southern Kordofan alone at the end of 1995.

21. The CSI delegates have stayed in several locations in Bahr El-Ghazal, including Tirole, Marial, Mayen Abun and Nyamiell, and have visited other places such as Manyiel. They have:

- taken evidence from men, women and children who have been captured and taken into slavery;

- talked to families whose children are currently enslaved in northern Sudan and heard graphic accounts of barbarities perpetrated during the raids by Arab PDF (Popular Defence Forces) against black African towns and villages;

- met Arab traders who described the way in which African slaves are brought back from the north and sold to their families or, if they have no surviving family members, to the local community administrators;

- taken evidence from local community leaders and made resources available to them for the redemption of a number of enslaved children.

22. On the basis of eye-witness evidence and first-hand accounts, the CSI delegates testify to gross violations of human rights, encouraged or directly inflicted by the Government of Sudan, that include the enslavement of women, children and men from the south and the abduction of boys and young men from the Nuba Mountains and from the Beja people and their enforced conscription into the government army to fight against the people of the south. In their conclusions, which fully support the findings of the Special Rapporteur, the CSI delegates indicate that the institution of slavery is experiencing a revival on a large scale in government-controlled areas of Sudan. The number of chattel slaves held in northern Sudan is estimated to be in the tens of thousands. Government-backed militia regularly raid black African communities for slaves and other forms of booty. The slaves, in most cases children and young women, are taken north where they are forced to provide domestic and agricultural labour and to provide sexual services against their will - for nothing other than a minimum of food for survival. Some boys are forced to attend military training camps, where they are indoctrinated and trained to wage war against their own people. The raids undertaken by the government-backed militia are accompanied by atrocities. Captives who are deemed unfit to serve as slaves are generally tortured and/or killed. Men are systematically massacred. But Arabs of some of the Rizeigat clans who are opposed to the Government have ceased their raids and have signed and honoured local agreements with some of the Dinka chiefs calling for the return of slaves to their families in the south. Slave raids, together with conventional warfare and the denial of humanitarian aid, are among the means used by the Government to transform the ethnically diverse country into an Arab, Islamic State, against the wishes of the vast majority of its black African population. The devastating effects of this policy are tantamount to genocide. In support of these conclusions, an abundance of cases is referred to in detail.

23. Again, in their draft preliminary report on a June 1996 visit to destinations in northern Bahr El-Ghazal, their thirteenth to Sudan and neighbouring countries during the past three years, the CSI delegates confirm the conclusions drawn on the basis of previous visits. On the basis of detailed testimony by freed slaves, they add that several hundreds of slaves have been bought back, exchanging them for prices agreed with the local Dinka authorities. The African communities had to engage in these transactions as they were dependent on the Arab traders to bring back their people who had been captured and enslaved. The Arabs claimed they needed this money to reimburse them for the risks they take and for the costs of bringing back those who had been slaves. Thus the Government had created a slave trade through its incitement of the Arabs in the north to engage in a conflict for which they are not paid directly, but in which they are encouraged to keep whatever booty they can - including human beings. Also in June 1996 the CSI appealed to the High Commissioner for Human Rights on behalf of 8 year old Abuk Kwany, a slave of Ahmed Ahmed in Naykata, Sudan. Abuk was captured in March 1994 during a raid on her Dinka village, conducted by troops of the Government of Sudan. In April 1996 Abuk's father went to Naykata with a Sudanese police officer to free his daughter, who is now called by the Muslim name "Howeh", but the slave owner demanded 50,000 Sudanese pounds for her freedom. The policeman failed to force Ahmed to surrender the girl, and her father had to leave her in bondage.

24. In its comments, the WCL concludes from the various documents submitted by the CSI that forced labour and slavery continue in the Sudan, that according to the civilian authorities, there are about 12,000 children enslaved in the north of the country and their number is rising through the continuing raids. The WCL stresses that the responsible officers and soldiers know that they may pursue these odious acts with total impunity, even though they are contrary to national law, and that the Government fails to fulfil its obligation to protect its citizens and to prevent and punish such abuses.

25. The Committee notes that no comments have been received from the Government on the matters raised by the World Confederation of Labour. It also notes that in its report on the application of the Convention, received 18 October 1996, the Government states that Sudan strongly condemns all such practices wherever they exist because they are degrading to human beings and their dignity, and it undertakes to make all possible efforts to stop such practices whenever it is established that they exist. The Government adds that Sudan has totally fulfilled its obligation towards the 1995 decision of the United Nations General Assembly, which calls upon the Government to investigate accusations of slavery and practices similar to slavery, by establishing an investigation committee. This committee is now working in the Nuba Mountains and neighbouring areas to conduct an investigation into such accusations. The Government concludes by stating its commitment to applying the Convention, as the ratification of any Convention makes it a law which must be enforced.

The Committee's conclusions

26. The Committee takes due note of these indications. It notes that long-standing accusations of widespread illegal imposition of forced labour, tolerated or encouraged by the Government, have been made for years by the Special Rapporteur and flatly rejected by the Government. The same allegations have now been made in comments by the WCL, based on a variety of detailed reports stated to be based on first-hand evidence. In the circumstances, the Committee, while noting the Government's indication that an investigation committee has been set up and is working in the Nuba Mountains, is deeply concerned that the Government has not lived up to its renewed undertaking to take all possible efforts to stop forced labour practices whenever it is established that they exist. Recalling that under Article 1 of the Convention, the Government has undertaken to suppress the use of forced labour in all its forms within the shortest possible period, and under Article 25, it shall be an obligation on the Government to ensure that the penalties imposed by law for the illegal exaction of forced labour are really adequate and are strictly enforced, the Committee urges the Government to take effective action to secure the observance of the Convention and to report on the concrete measures adopted, including information on any cases brought to justice, the number of convictions made and the penalties imposed on the offenders.

[The Government is asked to supply full particulars to the Conference at its 85th Session and to report in detail in 1997.]