Washington — The international community, in particular the U.S., has a responsibility to ensure that this week's upcoming legal decision on the boundary of Abyei, an oil-rich and contested region along the disputed north-south border within Sudan, is respected and that the residents of Abyei and the affected surrounding areas are protected from violence, said a strategy paper by the Enough Project released Monday.

The co-authors of "Abyei: Sudan's Next Test", Colin Thomas-Jensen and Maggie Fick, argue that this decision is the first major test of recent commitments made in Washington by the two parties to Sudan's 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

"How each party responds is a crucial litmus test of each side's will to implement the CPA," said Thomas-Jensen, Enough policy adviser. "By extension, their response to the Abyei ruling is a useful barometer for the efficacy of the [Barack] Obama administration's strategy on Sudan."

Abyei is a central area across the undefined border between Sudan's Muslim north and mostly Christian south. It sits atop significant oil reserves which both the southern and northern governments seek to control.

The 2005 CPA between the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which ended a civil war that cost about two million lives, established the Abyei Boundaries Commission of international experts to determine the boundaries of Abyei and whether it belongs to the north or south.

The NCP rejected the commission's decision, saying that it favoured the SPLM. Both sides then agreed to refer the case to the Permanent Court of Arbitration for a final ruling.

Abyei remains under special administrative status, governed by a joint north-south administration, as outlined by Abyei Protocol of the CPA. It has been the site of the most significant violence since the signing of the CPA, most recently a conflict in May 2008 in which more than 50,000 people were displaced. Many have yet to return.

As outlined in the CPA, in 2011 Abyei will vote on whether it wants to join the north or the south, while the south will vote on whether it wants to be independent.

On Wednesday, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague will give a final ruling on the boundaries of Abyei. It will decide whether the commission's decision went beyond its mandate in 2005 in outlining Abyei's borders. The court could either accept the 2005-set border, with a northern boundary about 90 kms north of Abyei, or reject the boundary and draw up its own.

Though both sides have pledged their commitment to respect the upcoming decision, most recently at a meeting with U.S. officials in Washington last month, experts say this remains uncertain.

"Both sides have been very public about their commitment to abiding by the decision," Jon Temin, programme officer for Sudan at the Centre for Mediation and Conflict Resolution of the United States Institute of Peace, told IPS. "It is hard to say what the chances of this are, but my guess is that the chances of public acceptance by the parties are high, especially initially.

Factors affecting this include how quickly the decision will be implemented and how the decision will be received by groups in and around Abyei, according to Temin.

"If the next few weeks proceed smoothly, it can be an important confidence-building measure between the NCP and SPLM," he added. "While the upcoming decision and its implementation presents a challenge, it also presents an opportunity."

"The ruling is coming at a moment of increasingly hostile relations between the ruling NCP and the South's SPLM, and the Sudanese government has displayed a consistent pattern - across several past regimes - not only of signing agreements with Southern adversaries and then failing to implement them," Enough's Maggie Fick told IPS.

"So while the recent commitments are positive, it remains to be seen what the real response following Wednesday will be," she said.

In Abyei, fears that conflicts over the boundaries will again arise are high.

"People are concerned, people are afraid," Abyei's chief administrator Arop Mayok told AFP. "They think that if the verdict is in favour of one of the parties, there will be problems, that the losing side may react negatively."

U.S. officials held new meetings with northern and southern leaders in Khartoum last week, and urged the two sides to stand by their commitments and not resort to violence following the announcement of the decision.

"The Sudanese armed forces and the (former rebel) Sudan People's Liberation Army must avoid confrontation and allow the United Nations Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS) freedom of movement throughout the area," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.

U.S. special envoy Scott Gration is to travel to Abyei for the announcement of the court ruling.

The U.N. representative to Sudan, Ashraf Qazi, said Saturday that he has received several reports in the past few weeks that SPLA members and police from the south are present in Abyei.

"This is a clear violation of the Abyei Roadmap Agreement and could lead to escalation and violence if it remained unchecked," Qazi told the Associated Press.

Pagan Amum, the secretary general of the ruling political party in the south, dismissed Qazi's concerns, saying the forces present in the region were there to protect the southern president, who was visiting nearby, and left afterward.

"There are no forces for the SPLA or southern police in the Abyei area," he said in a statement sent by e-mail to reporters.

"It is interesting that Mr. Qazi condemned only the reported presence of the south's SPLA forces in the Abyei region, because there have also been reports from the ground of the north's Sudan Armed Forces' 'oil police' amassing in Diffra, which is just outside the current 'Abyei Roadmap' interim boundaries, but still bordering the contested Abyei region," said Fick. "If any of the reports of troop buildup around Abyei are true, it is clearly a dangerous sign."

The report urged the U.S. to do several things, including bolstering the UNMIS in Abyei; maintaining a high-level diplomatic presence there until real commitments and activities toward implementation of the Abyei Protocol are under way; and pressuring the parties to establish a plan for border demarcation and follow it up.

The upcoming ruling represents an opportunity to promote sustained peace and development in one of the most volatile areas along the disputed border, observers say.

However, Abyei will continue to be a flashpoint, and sustained attention, including negotiations between the parties on long-term wealth-sharing arrangements related to Abyei's oil reserves, may be the only way to mitigate the risk that Abyei will unravel the north-south peace.

"If this decision is not accepted and implemented by the NCP and SPLM is it hard to see how they can cooperate on some of the challenges to come in Sudan, such as the 2010 elections and 2011 referendum on southern secession," Temin told IPS. "This is an early test, but an important test (especially for the people in and around Abyei)."