WASHINGTON, D.C. - Allan Reed, a veteran USAID senior foreign service officer with ties to Sudan spanning 44 years, has returned to Sudan to provide expert advice to the USAID Mission as it helps Sudan implement the remaining provisions of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended the devastating 22-year, north-south civil war. The implementation timeframe of the CPA, called the "interim period," ends July 8, 2011.

USAID is helping the CPA parties implement the referendum on self-determination for southern Sudan, which is among the CPA provisions, by providing technical assistance to the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, materials to carry out the referendum, civic and voter education to inform voters about the process, assistance to media reporting on the process and domestic organizations observing the process, and support for independent, international observation of the process.

"Southern Sudan has made impressive progress under the CPA. While there is still much to be done, the southern Sudanese people have waited a half century to exercise their right of self-determination, which was embedded in the 2002 Machakos Protocol, the foundation stone for the CPA," Mr. Reed said.

Mr. Reed, who is on temporary leave from his position as USAID Mission Director in Bosnia-Herzegovina, served as the USAID Director for Southern Sudan from 2003 to 2008, for which he received the 2008 Presidential Rank Meritorious Award, which recognizes senior career employees "who achieve results and consistently demonstrate strength, integrity, industry, and a relentless commitment to excellence in public service." From November 2003, Mr. Reed was USAID Representative for Sudan/Director of the Sudan Field Office in Nairobi, where USAID's Sudan operations were based before the USAID compound was reopened in Juba in 2005.

From 1982 to 1985, he served as a Development Officer in USAID's Africa Bureau in Washington, assisting in the expansion of the Sudan program to become USAID's largest in Africa, including increased food assistance, agricultural development, and an innovative petroleum initiative, linking macroeconomic policy reforms with a commodity import program in the years before Sudan developed its own oil resources.

In 1966, Mr. Reed joined the Peace Corps established by President John F. Kennedy five years earlier. His assignment to Gambela, Ethiopia, (east of Nasir in Sudan's Upper Nile state) prompted his interest in neighboring Sudan, as he witnessed thousands of Sudanese refugees cross into Ethiopia to flee fighting from Sudan's first civil war (1955-72). He established a hostel for Sudanese refugees in Gambela, where they could live while attending school, and in 1970-71, spent nearly a year walking throughout southern Sudan, producing a documentary film that NBC-TV aired in 1971, and conducting research on cross-border humanitarian assistance for nongovernmental organizations affiliated with the World Council of Churches. After that war ended with the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, Mr. Reed worked for the Sudan Council of Churches, managing the reconstruction of schools and clinics destroyed in the war. In Sudan in 1972, he met his wife Ayo, an American nurse who worked at Juba Teaching Hospital. They have four children, the oldest of whom they named Atem Akwon in honor of their deep affinity for Sudan.

For more information about USAID programs in Sudan, visit www.usaid.gov.

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