06019
Jan. 18, 2006

Ex-PC(USA) missionary accepts
advisory post in Sudanese government

Haruun Ruun will serve ‘the poorest nation
on the poorest continent in the world’

by Alexa Smith

        Haruun Ruun, 65, a former executive director of the New Sudan Council of Churches, left last week for Khartoum, where he will assume his new post immediately.

        Ruun was appointed by President Omar al-Bashir.

        After more than 50 years of civil strife, Sudan’s power-sharing government functions as a confederation of two states. The predominantly Muslim north operates on religious or sharia law, while the mostly black, mostly Christian south has a secular government.

more than twice that many have been forced from their homes.

        The unity model was advocated by John Garang, a Presbyterian former guerrilla leader who unified warring southern tribes to negotiate with Khartoum. Garang was killed in a helicopter crash last August, weeks after he was sworn in as the coalition government’s vice president.

        Elections scheduled for 2009 will install a central government. Two years later, southerners will vote in a referendum to stay with the unity government or create a separate nation.

        Ruun said the issue now is economic development.

        “Sudan … is the poorest nation on the poorest continent in the world,” he told the Presbyterian News Service (PNS) in a telephone interview before leaving for Khartoum. “If we do not address the poverty, we are not addressing the conflict. If we address the poverty, we eliminate some of the problems.”

        Those problems include a shortage of safe water to drink, a lack of sanitation facilities, poor medical service and widespread illiteracy.

        While the political process seems sluggish, Ruun said it’s an important start.

        “As the Americans say, ‘The proof is in the pudding,’” he told PNS. “The Sudanese have a saying: ‘We can smell it, but we’ve not tasted it yet.’ Our challenge is to implement (the unity-government model).”

        Ruun said the international church can help by supporting the delicate political balance — without meddling in Sudanese affairs — and helping with support of reconciliation efforts, humanitarian aid and advocacy for justice, peace and human rights.

        “What the church is doing is appropriate in most cases,” he said. “The challenge for the international church is to avoid fatigue, to do more,  to be advocates for peace. Peacemaking is not an option for Christians; it is essential. … With its advocacy the church must be bold, to advocate everywhere for peace and human rights.”

        Ruun, a Sudan native, studied Christian communications at Daystar International Institute in Kenya; graduated from a Bible college in South Carolina; and ultimately earned a master’s degree in education and a doctor of ministry degree from Columbia Biblical Seminary and School of Missions.

        In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious Spirit of Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award for peacemaking work.