Abyei Area

Abyei Area أبيي
Capital	Abyei Town
Official languages	Arabic and English
Government	Special administrative status
• Chief Administrator	Dr. Chol Deng Alak
Establishment
• Comprehensive Peace Agreement	9 January 2005
• Administration established	31 August 2008
Area
• Total	10,546 km2 (4,072 sq mi)
Population
• 2014 estimate	124,390

Abyei Arbitration
Court	Permanent Court of Arbitration
Full case name	The Government of Sudan v. The People's Liberation Movement/Army (Abyei Arbitration)
Decided	July 22, 2009
Court membership
Judges sitting	Professor Pierre-Marie Dupuy, president H.E. Judge Awn Al-Khasawneh Professor Dr. Gerhard Hafner Professor W. Michael Reisman Judge Stephen M. Schwebel
Case opinions
Decision by	Unanimous panel

The Abyei Area (Arabic: أبيي‎‎) is an area of 10,546 km² or 4,072 sq mi in Sudan accorded "special administrative status" by the 2004 Protocol on the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict (Abyei Protocol) in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the Second Sudanese Civil War. The capital of Abyei Area is Abyei Town. Under the terms of the Abyei Protocol, the Abyei Area was declared, on an interim basis, to be simultaneously part of the states of South Kurdufan and Northern Bahr el Ghazal.

In contrast to the borders of the former district, the Abyei Protocol defined the Abyei Area as "the area of the nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms transferred to Kordofan in 1905". In 2005, a multinational border commission established this to be those portions of Kordofan south of 10°22′30″ N. However, following continued disputes that erupted into violence and threatened the CPA, an international arbitration process redrew Abyei's boundaries in 2009 to make it significantly smaller, extending no further north than 10°10′00" N. This revised border has now been endorsed by all parties to the dispute.

The Sudan Tribune claims that the Dajo people were located in the region of Abyei prior to the seventeenth century, before being displaced by new migrants. From at least the eighteenth century Abyei was inhabited by the agro-pastoralist Ngok Dinka, a sub-group of the Dinka of Southern Sudan. The Messiria, a nomadic Arab people, who spend most of the year around their base at Muglad in northern South Kurdufan, would graze their cattle south to the Bahr river basin in Abyei during the dry season. At the establishment of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, the Messiria were predominantly located in the province of Kordofan (considered “northern”), while the Ngok Dinka were located in Bahr el Ghazal (considered “southern”). In 1905, after continued raids by the Messiria into Ngok Dinka territory, the British redistricted the nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms into Kordofan. The reason was threefold: to protect the Ngok Dinka from raids by the Messiria and thus pacify the area; to demonstrate that a new sovereign power was in control; and to bring the two feuding tribes under common administration.