The RVI Sudan Abductee Database is the outcome of an eighteen-month field investigation into abduction during the civil war in South Sudan. The research was carried out between 2001 and 2003 in Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal state and Warrab state - areas then under the control of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement / Army (SPLM/A) - and in neighbouring parts of Abyei district.

Following the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 all these areas - with the exception, to date, of Abyei - now fall under the authority of the Government of South Sudan (GoSS), in which the SPLM forms the majority party.

The research was designed to create a useable record of persons missing, abducted, enslaved and/or killed in Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal during raids on Dinka, Luo and Fertit communities by Murahaliin. (The Murahaliin are tribal militias that have operated out of areas of the North under the control of the central government in Khartoum. ) The research covers the period from 1983, the outset of war, to 2002 , when abduction from Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal effectively ceased.

The area of Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal affected by militia raiding during the civil war consists of seven SPLA/M counties: Aweil North, Aweil West, Aweil East, Aweil South, Twic, Gogrial and Wau – plus Abyei County in Kordofan. The inhabitants are Dinka from seven major tribal groups - Malual, Paliepiny, Abiem, Paliet, Twic, Rek and Ngok - with smaller groups of Fertit and Luo (the latter a Nilotic people who live alongside the Dinka of Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal).

During most of the period of the research the SPLA/M controlled the rural areas of Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal and Warrab and the part of Abyei district that lies south of the River Kiir (Bahr-el-Arab). The Sudan Government controlled the garrison towns of Wau, Gogrial and Aweil in Bahr-el-Ghazal, with a number of stations along the railway that runs from Babanusa to Wau, and the northern part of Abyei district (including Abyei town).

Rather than elicit numerical estimates, researchers recorded the full names and identifying details of individual abductees. This made it possible to establish, for the first time, a baseline of fact in an area previously characterised by speculation and controversy. The first version of the Database, with approximately ten thousand individual records of missing persons, was produced in May 2003. Work has continued when possible, in consultation with the affected communities, on completing the research and confirming the details of information previously collected.

The RVI researchers worked with the kin-based, patrilineal administrative system described above, which has been operative since the Condominium era, in order to establish a systematic account of the historical incidence of raiding and abduction and record the identities of missing persons.

The research was conducted in SPLM/A-controlled areas only. In 2004, after the main body of research had been carried out, an exploratory visit was made under UNICEF auspices to Wau, the major town in Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal, which was then under Khartoum government control. But government permission for a follow-up research trip proved unobtainable.

The database thus records only people abducted from SPLA areas, plus some from the Government-controlled area of Abyei. It does not include Southerners abducted or killed in the North, ie within Government-controlled areas. And it does not include those abducted or killed within the formerly Government-controlled towns of Bahr-el-Ghazal, notably Wau. Nor, with some exceptions, does it record abductions before the outbreak of war in 1983. Finally, certain parts of the SPLA-controlled area, particularly those along the Babanusa-Wau railway, are under-represented. Researchers had limited access to these places because of hostilities during the main phase of field research.

Under current SPLM/GOSS administration the largest regional units of administration in South Sudan are termed states. States are divided into counties and counties into payams. In northern Sudan the equivalent of a county is a mudiriya or mahal (province). A payam in the SPLM/GOSS system is equivalent to a markaz in the northern system. The payam or markaz is the successor to the district (or rural district council) of the Condominium era.

Administrative systems in Sudan have been subject to frequent change; earlier territorial divisions and names often endure in general usage after they have been officially replaced; and the same names may be used to refer both to a town and to the county or payam it is situated in.

In Dinka areas the people of a payam or markaz are organised under an executive chief, or several such chiefs (baany alamthith in Dinka). Chiefs are normally elected, but are usually from prominent lineages. The Dinka inhabitants of a payam are normally drawn from a single tribal section, ie a subsection of one of the tribal groups specified above. Each executive chief has a dozen or more sub-chiefs beneath him (baany kor or baany alamcol) with responsibility for particular tribal sections. Under each sub-chief are a number of gol-leaders (sing. nhomgol, pl. nhimgal), each responsible for a dozen or more families.

The field research in Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal was conducted by forty-five locally-recruited Sudanese researchers, trained and supervised in the field by the RVI. Each local researcher was responsible for collecting data in the area of one executive chief.

Researchers conducted structured, questionnaire-based interviews with executive chiefs, with sub-chiefs and gol-leaders, and with relatives of missing people. They were engaged on a contract basis and equipped with basic equipment such as bicycles. Field support was provided by Save The Children Fund (SC-UK), the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the Bahr-el-Ghazal Youth Association (BYDA).

The research technique employed involved a sequence of four questionnaires in English and Dinka. These were designed to elicit the following information, respectively:

Q1 Subchiefs and gol-leaders in territory of one executive chief

Q2 Chronology of raids in a single place since 1983

Q3 Details of a specific raid and names of those abducted or killed

Q4 Details of an individual abductee

The four questionnaires are hierarchically linked. For every raid listed in a chronology of raids (Q2), there is a questionnaire (Q3) recording details of that raid. And for every questionnaire recording details of a raid (Q3) there is a separate, detailed questionnaire (Q4) for each person abducted in that raid. This questionnaire, Q4 - the abductee questionnaire - with 118 data fields, is the most detailed of the four. Information recorded on this form includes the name of the abductee, their age if known, their marital status, gender, village of residence and clan affiliation, the names of their surviving relatives - and the date and circumstances of their abduction.

Sets of these questionnaires are available for those conducting further research into abduction. Please contact the Institute.

What is the reason for this high level of detail? Firstly, many of the victims were children at the time of abduction. Such abductees, if separated from their relatives, may recollect little about their families or place of origin. For this reason multiple identifying details may be crucial in the process of tracing them and establishing their identity. Secondly, the comprehensive, localised nature of the information makes it possible to cross-check and correct data collected by different researchers, at different times and in different places, and discover where information is inaccurate or lacking.

The completed questionnaires were taken to Nairobi, Kenya and the information entered into the abductee database by Southern Sudanese staff working with a Kenyan IT trainer. Further software development was carried out in London by Halcrow Ltd.

Where possible the database has been verified against information collected by other agencies, notably agencies that are assisting former abductees. When possible, in locations where data are deficient, further field research will be carried out and the results confirmed by consultation with chiefs and local authorities.

The Abduction and Slavery Project was conceived and implemented by the Rift Valley Institute. The field research was supervised by John Ryle, Jok Madut Jok and Fergus Boyle.

John Ryle is Chair of the Rift Valley Institute and Legrand Ramsey Professor of Anthropology at Bard College, NY. He was a member of the International Eminent Persons Group on Abduction and Slavery and co-author of the Group's report Slavery and Abduction in Sudan (2002). Dr Jok Madut Jok is author of War and Slavery in Sudan and Race, Religion and Violence in Sudan; he is a professor of history at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Fergus Boyle is Coordinator of the Shading Tree, an aid organization working in Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal. He is currently a protection officer for UNMIS, the UN Mission in Sudan.

The project was funded by the Open Society Institute, the J.M.Kaplan Fund and the UK Government's Department for International Development. It was conducted with the assistance of Save The Children (UK), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the Bahr-el-Ghazal Youth Association and the Dinka Chiefs Committee. The database software was devised by Brown Kanyangi Budambula in Nairobi and developed by Pete Johnson of Halcrow Ltd in London.