Background

Sudan’s over two decades’ long civil war led to the destruction of most of the physical infrastructure, and the disruption of social services in South Kordofan State, which was perhaps the war’s most contested battleground. People were forced to flee to local urban areas into the mountains for safety. With the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) (CPA) on 9 January 2005, peace-building efforts have began but the road to recovery and development will be long and arduous.

The prolonged civil strife has disrupted the socio-economic fabric and livelihood of the inhabitants of South Kordofan State leading to a situation where most villages have been abandoned for years. Although a large number of families have returned to their villages, most of them are still facing difficulties meeting the most fundamental day-to-day needs, such as food, water and health.

To help South Kordodan build and recover, the UN family launched this year the Integrated Community-based Recovery and Development (ICRD) project in South Kordofan (ICRD). The ICRD initiative supports community-led socio-economic development and local governance structures that are conflict sensitive, transparent, accountable, accessible, efficient, representative and sustainable. These goals are to be achieved through partnership between local stakeholders, including communities, NGOs, community-based organizations, and supported by the locality administration, state and federal government institutions as well as UN agencies.

The ICRD project is based on activities identified by local communities and developed through a consultative and participatory planning process. It builds on the comparative advantage of the following UN agencies partnering through this project: UNICEF, World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Fund for Agricultural Development and UNDP region.

Objectives
The main development objectives of the ICRD programme are to meet the basic social and economic needs, to enhance participatory and community-based conflict transformation and peace building and to strengthen human and institutional capacity at locality and community levels for an estimated 110,000 populations in 45 most vulnerable communities in South Kordofan. An integrated sectoral and cross-sectoral development packages that would take environmental, biophysical, socio economic and political factors into account will be provided with technical support and assistance by government authorities and sister UN agencies.
In contribution to achieving the ICRD’s goal, UNDP is tasked with the following:

• To enhance participatory and community-based conflict transformation and peace building
• To promote human rights and rule of law awareness
• Develop/strengthen human and institutional capacity governance institutions at locality and community levels

Snapshots of the project's major achievements
• Organized orientation and consultative forums in partnership with the Ministry of Local Government, CSOs;
• Identified and activated 15 Peace Promotion committees and trained 116 community peace promoters.
• Conducted conflict management and rule of law awareness workshop for 16 participants;
• Capacity in resource mobilization/fundraising, networking, lobbying and advocacy and strategic planning for CSOs enhanced through training workshops supported by onsite mentoring and a course based reference guide;
• Leadership and community management skills of 38 Native administrators enhanced; and
• Dialogue and planning with the government, CSOs and folk media groups to support peace promotion through drama initiated.