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31 local, foreign organizations to monitor Darfur referendum

Xinhua, March 13, 2016 Adjust font size:

Some 31 local and international organizations have requested to monitor a referendum in Sudan's war-torn Darfur that will decide the region's future administrative status, Sudanese Media Center reported on Saturday.

The organizations include 25 local and 6 international ones such as the Great Lakes Organization, the Arab League, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, according to Ibrahim Draij, the official in charge of the monitoring process at Darfur Administrative Referendum Commission.

He said the Sudanese Foreign Ministry will facilitate entry for the foreign monitors.

Voting in the Darfur administrative referendum is scheduled for April 11 and will last for three days. However, both the armed groups and representatives of the internally displaced persons and refugees have vowed reject to the polling.

Major Darfur rebel movements also said to reject it unless Khartoum fulfils other demands including reaching a political agreement with the region's armed groups and pays individual compensations for the people affected by the conflict there.

The Sudanese government said the referendum is a constitutional right that must be implemented according to Abuja peace deal which Khartoum signed with the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM)/Minni Minnawi faction in 2006.

The referendum in Darfur will decide whether or not the region should remain as five states or become one entity with a degree of autonomy.

The division of Darfur was one of the grievances that initially fuelled the conflict between the Arab-led government in Khartoum and non-Arab tribes there. Endit