Jan 7 (Reuters) - Semi-autonomous southern Sudan begins voting on Sunday in a referendum on whether to secede from the north and establish Africa's youngest nation.
The mostly Christian and animist south, which has significant oil reserves, is widely expected to choose secession from the predominantly Muslim north.
The United Nations has played a key role in the country since the 2005 signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended two decades of north-south civil war. Following are key facts about the U.N. role in Sudan.
NORTH-SOUTH CEASEFIRE
The United Nations has two separate peacekeeping missions in Sudan -- one deployed mainly in the south and the other in Darfur. The U.N. Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), established in 2005, is charged with monitoring implementation of the CPA and investigating alleged north-south ceasefire violations.
UNMIS has a mandated full strength of 10,000 military personnel and 715 police, along with an unspecified number of civilian officials. According to the mission's website, a total of 55 UNMIS personnel have been killed, among them 22 troops, three police and three military observers.
It operates mainly in southern Sudan. Recently it has been focusing on border flashpoints, such as the disputed oil-rich Abyei region. UNMIS has recently beefed up its presence in Abyei due to concerns that violence could flare up there.
UNMIS is also playing a key role in this weekend's referendum, providing security and logistics, such as delivering ballot sheets to polling stations and transporting the ballot boxes afterwards so that the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission can count the votes.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy had hoped to add around 2,000 more troops to UNMIS to provide extra security after the referendum, but Khartoum did not approve the request. Le Roy said boosting UNMIS was no longer an urgent issue, since the situation on the ground has been relatively calm lately.
Although tensions have subsided in recent weeks, U.N. officials warn that north-south violence could flare up again. The reason for their concerns is that the two sides have yet to agree on how to hold a promised referendum for Abyei, or on how to divide up the country's oil revenues if the south secedes.
DARFUR
The United Nations and African Union have also deployed a joint peacekeeping force in Sudan's western Darfur region, known as UNAMID. If the south secedes, Darfur will remain with the north of Sudan.
UNAMID was established in 2007 but has had a difficult time in Darfur. It has a U.N. Security Council mandate for some 26,000 troops and police but has been slow to deploy. As of October 2010, it was still not at 100 percent deployment, with just over 22,000 uniformed personnel in Darfur.
UNAMID has suffered 75 fatalities, 61 of them military or police personnel, according to the mission's website.
The United Nations estimates that as many as 300,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003 due to violence, hunger or disease. U.N. humanitarian agencies and a network of non-governmental organizations provide food and medical aid to millions of displaced persons in camps across Darfur.
Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in Darfur in 2003, accusing the Khartoum government of neglecting the region. Khartoum set out to crush the rebellion with troops and mostly Arab militias, unleashing a wave of violence that Washington and some activists call genocide.
Although the mass killings ceased years ago, fitful peace talks in Doha have failed to end the conflict. Despite a U.N. arms embargo for all of Darfur, government forces continue to attack rebels, prompting counteroffensives by the militants.
Western diplomats in New York say they hope that the joint U.N.-AU mediator for Darfur, Djibrill Bassole of Burkina Faso, will be able breathe new life into the Doha peace talks on Darfur once the southern referendum is over.
UNAMID has faced a number of challenges that have hampered its effectiveness over the last four years -- Khartoum's slow approval of various national troop contingents; Khartoum's insistence that UNAMID forces come from Africa; and a dearth of helicopters to transport troops to conflict zones quickly. (For further coverage of the south Sudan referendum, click here [ID:nLDE6BD0GS]) (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Editing by Eric Beech)
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