New Research Documents Slavery in Sudan

On May 28, Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom will host the release of a groundbreaking study listing the names of at least 10,000 people enslaved in Sudan.

The study was prepared by the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) an independent research and educational association based in East Africa and England. The study features the first ever database on the extent of slavery in Sudan.

The nature and extent of slavery and abductions in the Sudan has long been a subject of great concern to the international community, while the Sudanese Government strongly denies that slavery and abductions are a cause for great concern.

The release of the study will take place at 9:30 AM, on Wednesday, May 28, 2003 at:

Freedom House
1319 18th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
The study is based on extensive face-to-face interviews conducted to gather details about more than 11,000 people abducted from rebel-held areas by Government-backed tribal militias. Over 10,000 of the abductees remain unaccounted for. The names of more than five thousand people killed in the raids were also gathered.

This study gives humanitarian agencies and human rights organizations an essential tool for tracing and reuniting abductees with family members.

"Abduction and slavery are horrific; the important thing is that we now know what the facts are,” said Dr. Jok Madut, one of the study’s participants. “We know for certain who has been abducted, how many, where and when," he said.

Dr. Madut will announce the study’s findings with John Ryle, chairman of the Rift Valley Institute and a distinguished British Africanist.

The Center for Religious Freedom, which defends religious freedom throughout the world, is strongly engaged in the crisis in Sudan. Penn Kemble, a senior scholar at Freedom House, chaired a State Department-sponsored group last year that reported on slavery and abductions in Sudan.