A Personal Perspective on the Ngok-Twic Conflict in Aneet
Publication Summary
Ever since the conflict between groups of Twic Mayardit and the Ngok Dinka of Abyei in the border town of Aneet broke out on February 10, 2022, there has been a flurry of reactions on both sides of the conflict, crisscrossing both at home and abroad. In this heated climate, in which emotions on both sides run high, truth becomes the primary victim. Under these circumstances, I wanted to refrain from making any public statement, in case what I say is misunderstood or deliberately misconstrued on both sides and risks adding fuel to the fire. In the end, I decided that silence in such a crisis is also untenable. I have been highly moved by some of the messages to which I feel irresistibly driven to respond.
Francis Mading Deng's Biography
Francis M. Deng has recently been assigned the position of South Sudan's Roving Ambassador after having been the country's first Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Prior to that, he served for five years as the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide at the level of Under-Secretary-General. From 1992 to 2004, he served as Representative of the Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons. His first position in the United Nations was that of Human Rights Officer in the Secretariat from 1967 to 1972 when he was appointed Sudan's Ambassador to the Nordic Countries. He was also Sudan's Ambassador to Canada and the United States of America and was also Minister of State for Foreign Affairs for five years. After leaving his Government's service, he held a series of positions in leading think tanks and universities in the United States. Dr. Deng graduated with an LLB (honors) from the University of Khartoum to which he was appointed a member of the Law Faculty and then sent abroad for post-graduate studies. He holds an LLM and a JSD from Yale University Law School. Dr. Deng has authored and edited over thirty books in a wide variety of fields and has written two novels on the crisis of national identity in the Sudan.