June 06, 2014
Since May 28, we have been running a wiki survey asking “What are the best policy options for engaging with the government of Sudan to end or curtail its attacks on civilians across the country?” Recently overshadowed by the civil war in South Sudan, atrocities in Sudan have continued in regions such as Blue Nile, Kordofan and Nuba Mountains. We will leave the survey open for continued voting but here’s a summary of the results so far:
- First, our respondents see support for the Sudan Revolutionary Front and civilians in several regions as the best policy option. “Support-- financial, intellectual, and material--to the SRF; a well enforced no-fly zone in Nuba Mountains to permit corridor for humanitarian aid” and “Deliver sufficient humanitarian aid to Sudanese civilians in the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, and Darfur, with or without agreement from GoS” both have scored the highest so far.
- Second, our respondents also expressed strong support for mediation efforts with “Assist Khartoum with a national dialogue and constitutional reform process” ranking 4th.
- Third, punitive actions such as an arms embargo, oil embargo or further sanctions were unpopular with many ranking toward the bottom of the list. “Target Khartoum with additional sanctions against senior level political, military, and intelligence leaders” ranked 6th, highest among punitive actions.
- Fourth, with regard to Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, our respondents offered little support for deferring ICC prosecution or increasing efforts to arrest al-Bashir, perhaps reflecting the sentiment in this recent Monkey Cage blog post on Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad
- Finally, options that suggest either normalizing relations with Sudan or alternatively removing him from power ranked lowest with “replace the Sudanese government, by force if necessary” ranking last.
We have received over 500 votes so far and 11 ideas generated by users. We filtered three user-generated ideas that were not topical. A map of where votes came from is below, more information can be found under View Results on the survey page.
We used All Our Ideas to run this wiki survey. For more on the wiki survey method, see this paper by Matthew Salganik and Karen Levy. -AN
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