I. SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT 

1. This arbitration presents issues of vital importance to the Sudanese people and the international community.  These issues concern the Ngok Dinka’s right to their historic homeland in the Abyei Area and, more fundamentally, the rule of law in contemporary affairs.  Regrettably, the Government’s position in this arbitration ignores – and would do grave violence to – both the people of the Abyei Area and the rule of law. 

2. The Government’s Memorial advances a laundry list of eleven different objections to the decisions made by the ABC Experts.  Although disguised as supposed “excesses of mandate,” the GoS’s objections in fact disregard and gravely distort both the parties’ agreements regarding the ABC proceedings and the provisions of the Abyei Arbitration Agreement.  Thus, the Government purports to equate the ABC Experts with an ICSID or commercial arbitration tribunal, ignoring the tailor-made provisions of the parties’ procedural agreements regarding the ABC; the Government similarly disregards its own officials’ active participation in the ABC proceedings – including in a number of the very procedural actions that the GoS now challenges.  At the same time, the Government attempts to equate this Tribunal with an ICSID annulment panel, ignoring the terms of the parties’ Arbitration Agreement and urging this Tribunal to exceed its own jurisdictional authority.