First Anniversary of Respect

With the posting of this fourth issue, RESPECT proudly brings the first year of its publication to a successful end. It forces its way ahead, in playing its designated role in consolidating the collectively exerted efforts to elucidate  questions of cultural diversification and the spreading and promotion of human rights culture in our country.

At this crucial juncture in our history; a time when our different peoples, in different regions of the country, assert their right in preserving, safeguarding and promoting thier own cultures, in a manner, not in any way falling short in urgency, than that of their legitimate resolve on  preserving their right in wealth and power; we look forward to put hands together for showing more concern with issues of cultural diversification, and more consolidated research and dialogue on ways and means for reinforcing inter-cultural interchange and dialogue between our different peoples. These are the essential elements for entrenching unity and peace. For this reason, we hope that RESPECT would work hard to publish more and more research papers and contributions in future issues. These contributions should work hard to inculcate the principals of democracy, basic human rights   and the establishment of the state of law and order, whose institutions should positively respond to the needs and aspirations  of our peoples and cultures, in standing up for their identities and documenting their history and consolidating creative dialogue.

 We tried our best to make sure that the papers in this issue are congruent with the declared questions and goals, and responding to the hopes and aspirations of our people in self-determination within the unified, strong and developing Sudan. This is one of the reasons why we included the research paper presented by Professor Francis Deng and Professor Abdullah An-Na'im, Unity and self-determination : The Case Of Sudan. This paper, which was written in 1996, is re-published in this issue of RESPECT, because it handles a currently urgent issue, at a time where all political forces are calling for their basic rights. The contributions of Dr. Majdi El-Jouzoli, The Bloated Identities: Inventing a Country  within the Adversity of Underdevelopment, Mohamed Osman Obeid (Deraij), Darfur: The Sudanese State and Racialized Violence, and Aisha Homaida: Globalization and the State in the Red Sea Hills: Beja Issues on ressources management and prospectus of Peace are included here to shed more light on this turning point in the history of our country. Patricia Musa's paper expounds an example of peaceful cultural exchange between ethnically and culturally distinct groups.

This issue also includes a paper presented by Dr. Luka Biong Deng about Education in Southern Sudan, which reports on  specific case studies,applicable to other regions, particularly war-torn areas. We would like to express our sincere gratefulness to Dr. Deng for his prompt positive response to our request to publish his paper in this issue, despite his busy daily schedule as Minster for Presidential Affairs in The Government of Southern Sudan.

Following our decision to designate the third issue's main section to the rights of women as a core foundation for the reinforcement of justice, development and peace, we included a regular section dealing with women issues. Amina Alrasheed Nayel contributes a paper to this section in this issue, shedding light on the political development in Sudan with relation to women issues through a case study on Sudanese women in Diaspora, particularly in the UK.

In our attempt to appreciate other people's experiences in the area of cultural diversity and human rights issues, we launched a new section in the third issue. We presented then the paper offered by the Dutch researcher Marina De Richet, about health matrons in Yemen. In this issue, we present a paper tilled: "Ethnic minorities and states in the Middle East, the Case of Iraq", written by the Iraqi researcher Dr. Hisham Dawood , an anthropologist who works for the French National Research Center (CNRS). We will do our best to include, in our coming issues contributions from other human experiences .

The main dossier of the next issue will be devoted for child issues from the perspective of cultural diversity and culture of human rights.  We look forward for your contributions, for the welfare of new and upcoming generations in a developing Sudan, which accommodates all regardless to cultural and linguistic differences and their longing for peace justice, equality and fraternity.

                                                                                                              Editorial board