Abyei

Nine chiefdoms

The Ngok Dinka are agro-pastoralists who live where northern and southern Sudan meet. Before 1905 they came under the colonial administration of the south; that year they were transferred to Kordofan, in the north, mainly to protect them from raids by other groups there.^[2] The Misseriya, largely nomadic herders from western Sudan, bring their cattle to graze in Abyei each season.^[3]

When Sudan’s long civil war was ending, the government and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army could not agree where Abyei’s borders lay. In the 2004 Abyei Protocol they gave it a special status and defined it as “the area of the nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms transferred to Kordofan in 1905.”^[2] Abyei was to hold its own referendum on joining the south, alongside the south’s vote on independence.^[3]

Oil and the lines

Three major oil fields lay in the area. In July 2005 a commission of experts reported that Abyei reached well north of the Bahr el-Arab River and took in Heglig and other oil fields to the east. Sudan’s government rejected the report, saying Abyei was only a narrow strip south of the river with no oil fields.^[2] In 2008, after fighting in which Abyei town was burned, the two sides agreed to binding arbitration.^[2]

The tribunal ruled on 22 July 2009 at the Peace Palace in The Hague. It found that the experts had exceeded their mandate on the eastern, western and outer northern lines, and drew its own: from longitude 27°50′E to 29°00′E, north to latitude 10°10′N. The new eastern line left Heglig and other oil fields outside Abyei, though the award itself does not say so.^[2] The tribunal stressed that the boundaries did not affect the grazing rights of the Misseriya or anyone else. One arbitrator dissented strongly, but both sides said they accepted the ruling.^[2]

A vote that never came

The referendum set for January 2011 did not happen, because Sudan and the south could not agree who was entitled to vote.^[3] As South Sudan prepared for independence on 9 July 2011, fighting in Abyei drove more than 100,000 people from their homes. The two sides agreed on 20 June to withdraw their forces and let Ethiopian peacekeepers in, and on 27 June the UN Security Council created the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei, UNISFA.^[1]

An African Union plan of 2012 proposed a referendum in October 2013, but the two governments would not sign up to it. On 27 October 2013 the Ngok Dinka held their own vote: of 64,775 voters, 12 chose Sudan. Khartoum, Juba, the Misseriya, the African Union and the UN all condemned or rejected it.^[3] Both the protocol and the AU plan left the Misseriya out of the vote, because they use the area seasonally.^[3]

The peacekeepers are still there. In November 2024 the Security Council renewed their mandate and condemned the expanding presence of South Sudanese soldiers and security personnel in the area, demanding that they leave.^[4] It renewed the mandate again in November 2025.^[5]