{"id":24850,"date":"2016-04-24T05:28:49","date_gmt":"2016-04-24T05:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/sudan-s-darfur-votes-to-retain-multi-state-system\/"},"modified":"2016-04-24T05:28:38","modified_gmt":"2016-04-24T05:28:38","slug":"sudan-s-darfur-votes-to-retain-multi-state-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/sudan-s-darfur-votes-to-retain-multi-state-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Sudan&#8217;s Darfur votes to retain multi-state system"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Sudan&#8217;s western region of Darfur has voted to retain its current multi-state administrative status, the electoral commission says.}<\/p>\n<p>More than 97% of voters in a referendum chose to remain as five states rather than form a single region, it said.<\/p>\n<p>The vote was boycotted by major rebel and opposition groups which say a united region would have more autonomy.<\/p>\n<p>The referendum was part of a peace process to end 13 years of conflict that has left 300,000 people dead.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of the vote, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on war crimes charges related to Darfur, said it would be a free and fair poll.<\/p>\n<p>However, the US state department warned that the referendum could not be considered credible &#8220;under current rules and conditions&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The vote was held amid ongoing insecurity and many of Sudan&#8217;s 2.5 million displaced people were not registered to vote.<\/p>\n<p>The electoral commission said 3.08 million people out of 3.21 million eligible voters turned out for the referendum earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>Rebels have long sought more regional powers to end what they see as Khartoum&#8217;s interference in land ownership conflicts.<\/p>\n<p>They believe that the government&#8217;s splitting of Darfur into three states in 1994, and then into five states, led to heavier control from Khartoum and helped to trigger the conflict that broke out in 2003.<\/p>\n<p>Correspondents say the Sudanese government believes a unified Darfur would give the rebels a platform to push for independence just as South Sudan did successfully in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>The ICC has indicted President Bashir on counts of genocide and war crimes committed in Darfur.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Bashir &#8211; who has told the BBC he will step down as president in 2020 &#8211; has dismissed the ICC as a &#8220;political tribunal&#8221;.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-11905 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_89408226_032461843.jpg\" alt=\"Rebel groups say a single Darfur entity could achieve more autonomy\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Sudan&#8217;s western region of Darfur has voted to retain its current multi-state administrative status, the electoral commission says.} More than 97% of voters in a referendum chose to remain as five states rather than form a single region, it said. The vote was boycotted by major rebel and opposition groups which say a united region [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24850"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24850"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}