Background Paper on Slavery and Slavery Redemption in the Sudan

Human Rights Watch has long denounced the contemporary form of slavery practiced in Sudan in the context of the fifteen-year civil war. This practice is conducted almost entirely by government-backed and armed militia of the Baggara tribe in western Sudan, and it is directed mostly at the civilian Dinka population of the southern region of Bahr El Ghazal. The government's purpose in arming this tribal militia, known as muraheleen, seems to be to conduct a cost-reduced counterinsurgency war against the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), which is identified with the Dinka tribe of southern Sudan.