TIMELINES: An interim constitution is drafted on Oct. 10 of what year in Sudan?

Monday, Oct. 10, 2011

  THEN Oct. 10, 1985, following a coup that suspended the previous constitution, an interim constitution is drafted in Sudan. However, the interim constitution is then suspended following another coup four years later in June 1989. A new constitution is then not implemented until 1998. After its independence in 1956, Sudan becomes a hotbed of civil strife seeing widespread peace for only 11 years from 1972 to 1983 following the signing of a peace accord between the North and the South in Addis Ababa. In 1983, the peace accord is abrogated, Islamic law implemented, and civil war breaks out again between northern and southern factions. NOW On July 9 of this year, after massive casualties and international concern over Africa’s longest-running civil war, South Sudan became an independent country, seceding from Sudan. The succession came as a result of a referendum vote in January 2011 in which an overwhelming majority of Southern Sudanese voted to secede and become Africa’s first new country since Eritrea split from Ethiopia in 1993. The separation has not been without its hitches and the north, which lost the majority of its oil reserves in the split, has been hit hard economically. Many southerners who had previously lived in the north moved back to the south—either in fear of violence or out of desire to be in their homeland and the exodus caused many northern businesses to lose their customers. Trade between the north and the south has also become difficult causing food and commodity prices to rise dramatically.