Merowe Dam Refugees in the Sudan
The Manasir lose their land
The Merowe dam
The Merowe dam is located on the Nile about two hundred miles north of Khartoum. It is Africa’s largest new dam, creating a one hundred and twelve mile-long reservoir to generate electricity for Sudan’s cities and the petroleum industry. Other dams on the Nile have had serious impacts on the environment. Their reservoirs have silted up and withheld valuable nutrients from agriculture and fisheries in the downstream areas.
Merowe will ultimately displace roughly 70,000 of the largely self-sufficient Manasir people, a riverine tribe that has long lived in the area being flooded. Hamdab and Amri tribespeople are being displaced as well. The people of this isolated area live in small 
farming villages along the Nile, where they grow dates and other crops. The majority of these farmers would like to stay in the area and live along the banks of the new lake (reservoir) created by the dam, but the government is making their lands available to others, while relocating the farmers to the Nubian desert.
A number of foreign private companies are involved with Merowe. Lahmeyer (Germany) and Alstom (France) have provided overall project management and the power supply, respectively. Unsuccessful efforts were made to draw these and the other companies’ attention to the host of human rights abuses arising in connection with Merowe.
The Manasir are not consulted
When the project was first started, issues relating to resettlement choices and compensation were decided without consulting the affected communities. In fact, the critical issues concerning the future of the affected communities were determined by a number of presidential decrees.
The communities claim that in order to avoid criticism of this unjust decision-making process, the Sudanese Dam Authority (SDA) handpicked a few locals and appointed them as the representatives of the communities, and then obtained their “approval” of what the SDA had already decided. This has allowed the government to continue to claim that the affected communities have already agreed with the SDA’s resettlement and compensation plans.
Negotiation efforts rebuffed
The Manasir Council represents the majority of the dam- affected people. The demands of the affected communities and their Council have always been modest. Their focus has not been on halting Merowe, but on improving the terms of compensation and 
resettlement on their land along the shores of the reservoir.
For years, the SDA has refused to recognize or negotiate with these democratically elected representatives of the affected communities. Instead, the SDA has responded to popular protests with police violence that has led to protestor deaths and arrests. In 2006, the Manasir succeeded in negotiating a resettlement plan acceptable to the communities with the government of Nile State, which intervened to defuse the rising tension in the area. Yet the SDA continues to insist that its unilaterally decided resettlement plan should prevail.
- John Ruggie, United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative on Business & Human Rights