For all of the young people we met in our ten days in southern Sudan, the future was bleak. To learn more about what they needed to rebuild their lives, we sought out "returnees" -- those who had returned after fleeing to neighboring countries or to other areas of Sudan during the 21-year civil war between north and south Sudan. This war only ended when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in January 2005.

President Obama has named retired Air Force General Scott Gration to be his envoy to Sudan. Amid the furor created by the International Criminal Court's issuance of an arrest warrant for President Omar al Bashir and the subsequent Sudanese government expulsion of Non-Governmental Organizations that provide support to the two and one half million internally displaced persons in Darfur, this is welcome news. 

This week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced its formal arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and the atmosphere inside Sudan, as RI discovered last week, is very tense. The staff of the United Nations, as well as other humanitarian organizations, have been told to be on the highest alert. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has warned, "Whatever happens (Sudan) must protect UN personnel" and act responsibly.

Bashir mockingly told the ICC to "eat" the expected warrant. This is the first ICC arrest warrant ever issued for a sitting president.

I find it kind of shocking that there is more attention to the poker tournaments I participate in than in the tragedy ongoing in Darfur. Since 2003, nearly 2.5 million people have been forced out of their homes, living in makeshift huts in large, sprawling camps in this western region of Sudan. Up to 400,000 people have been killed according to some estimates.

A few years ago, Don Cheadle and I were having lunch and started talking about the crisis in Darfur. He had just released his book "Not on Our Watch" and was actively campaigning for more attention and meaningful action on Darfur. I felt that what was happening in Darfur was so horrible, and just said, "Nobody knows what’s going on in this part of the world. We should do a poker event for them." At the time I thought it would raise around $25,000 or $50,000. This small idea turned into Ante Up for Africa -- a hugely successful celebrity-studded series of charity poker events that has raised $2.5 million since July 2007.

Nicholas Kristof's recent blog post took the United Nations to task for cancelling a security detail for him and his traveling partner, actor and activist George Clooney, on their recent trip to eastern Chad. Actually, Kristof said that his complaint with the UN is not the lack of security but rather the sudden reversal of position by high-level UN officials.  Kristof claims UN leadership worried that Clooney might condemn the actions of Sudanese president Omar al Bashir as genocide, thereby worsening already tense relations between Khartoum and New York.  A note: Mr. Clooney was travelling as a private citizen (albeit a very high profile private citizen), not in his role as a UN Goodwill Ambassador.

On February 5th, a remarkable group of 60 friends of Refugees International gathered at a London reception hosted by Lord and Lady Malloch-Brown, two people who have been key supporters of Refugees International’s work throughout our 30 years.

London is full of hard-to-believe history.  I remember the first flat I lived in when I moved there in 1998 was over 300 years old!  All this history made me believe it would have been awe inspiring to hold RI’s first ever European event at Admiralty House-- the site of Winston Churchill’s former home and the location which played host to President Kennedy’s 1962 visit to the UK.  And it really was.  It seemed fitting in Refugees International’s 30th anniversary year to be surrounded by some of the great men and women of modern British politics, media, film, philanthropy, and business.

On Wednesday, February 11, Save Darfur hosted a discussion on "Violence Against Women and the Darfur Genocide." While I was all too familiar with the systematic murder of civilians in the western part of Sudan since 2003, and well aware of the latest buzz surrounding the warrant issued for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s arrest, I was admittedly unaware of the vast use of rape as a weapon of war by the government-backed Janjaweed, especially in the early years of the war. Unfortunately, too many people continue to share my previous ignorance.

The decision to issue an arrest warrant for President Al-Bashir of Sudan by the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been the source of many intense discussions here in Sudan at the moment. This will be the first ICC arrest warrant ever issued for a sitting president. Since I arrived in Sudan a couple of weeks ago I have talked with many Sudanese people who are members of civil society and human rights organizations, most of whom are no fans of their president, but who have varying views on the  indictment.

Last week I attended a remarkable conference in Khartoum called "The Millennium Development Goals: the position of women in the Sudanese laws." I was struck by the account given by a young woman from the Nuba Mountains about the lives of women in her community.

The Nuba Mountains area lies at the point where north and south Sudan meet. It experienced enormous suffering during the 21-year war between north and south Sudan, which was halted by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The Nuba Mountains was not amongst the areas included in the agreement’s referendum provision, and today there is still no agreement between north and south Sudan about its future.

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the end of Sudan’s civil war between the north and the south. For two decades armed actors manifested a capacity for calculated brutality and imposition of human suffering on a level that defies description or reasonable comprehension.

Four years after the parties agreed to lay down their weapons there are two important lessons to keep in mind.

The first is that ‘peace’ is not just an absence of war, and that peace-building takes more than just the handshakes and photo-ops that exemplify the signing of accords.  The second is that peace is always possible, even when it is impossible to conceive of how to get there.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was the result of a massive diplomatic push by Sudanese leaders and by the international community, led in large part by the United States. The agreement itself is strong, but far reaching and ambitious.  

This year, however, Sudan stands on the brink of a potentially volatile period in the implementation of that agreement.  We have just entered into the year designated for the first countrywide democratic election, and elections always have the potential to cause controversy and instability.