Nairobi -- A new film, "Just Peace", highlighting the lives of young people from north and south Sudan who experienced a 21-year-long civil war, has been launched in Nairobi, the capital of neighbouring Kenya. "We wanted to gain support for the peace process not through using sharpened headlines or horrors statistics, but by saying Sudan is not all conflicts. There is hope and beauty," said Sorcha O'Callaghan, speaking for the six aid agencies that produced the film, under the auspices of the Sudan Advocacy Coalition.
Peace accords in January 2005 brought an end to the two-decade long war between Sudan's mainly Christian and animist South and the Muslim and Arab North. About 2 million people died and another 5 million were displaced because of the conflict.
O'Callaghan said the film, which had its East African premiere in Nairobi on 14 June, was intended to allow the voices of the people of southern Sudan, thousands of whom are returning home to places without food or basic services, to be heard.
Aid agencies are helping with the task of assisting people to return home to vast regions with virtually no infrastructure, no health services, and very few schools.
"The Church has a unique role to play. It had been weakened in many places, but it is fortunate to see it strengthening, as people come back and stability increases," said Ian Sinkinson, the southern Sudan programme director of Tearfund, one of the agencies that sponsored the film.
Speaking at the Nairobi presentation of the film, Samson Kwaje, spokesman for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army which fought the country's northern-based government, acknowledged the role played by the churches, which had remained inside southern Sudan when others had fled.
"We would like them to help in education and rural development," said Kwaje.
Kenyan General Lazarus Sumbeiywo, who successfully brokered the peace agreement, warned against denominations competing against each other.
"There has to be more collaboration between the Catholics, Anglicans and others," he said.
The film was the product of collaboration between Christian Aid, Save the Children UK, Tearfund, CARE International, Oxfam GB, International Rescue Committee and a non- profit production company, ScreenStation Productions.
The agencies want to encourage support for southern Sudan, at a time when an unrelated conflict in Sudan's western province of Darfur is capturing public attention.
"Sudan is not just a conflict in Darfur which we've all heard about, but also a conflict in the South that's been going on for 20 years, which we hope is ending," said ScreenStation's Andy Jones, quoted by the Sudan Vision Web site.
