2000-MAY-1: A panel commissioned by the United States to monitor religious freedom issued its first report...calling for measures to be taken against China and Sudan if they fail to improve their treatment of religious believers. The "Reading Room" section of the web site of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom contains the full report. ₂ The Commission designated China and Sudan as "countries of particular concern:"  The Commission proposes "a comprehensive 12-month plan to significantly strengthen the United State's response to this crisis." They also suggest that both aid and sanctions be increased. The Commission also expressed its concern over freedom of religion in Russia, and human rights abuses against the Muslim population of Chechnya (see below).

2001-JUN:  ReligionToday reported that the U.S. House of Representatives approved H.R. 2052, the Sudan Peace Act, by a vote of 422-2. The bill condemns human rights abuses in Sudan, and the use of food as a weapon while encouraging support for viable civil authorities and institutions in non-government-controlled areas. Additionally, the measure condemns slavery and the use of enslaving parties as a means of ethnic cleansing. The Senate passed the bill in 2001-JUL as S-180. ₃ The bill would have:

2001-AUG: OFFnews.info reported: "The reality is that more than two million Christians and animists in southern Sudan have been systematically murdered, raped, brutalized, sold into slavery and banished from their homes by forces loyal to the government of Sudan. This 18-year old genocidal campaign was spawned by the determination of the Islamic supremacists in Khartoum to liquidate what they call dhimmis (or infidels). In recent years, however, the original justification for this bloodletting has been powerfully reinforced -- and its execution underwritten -- by an insidious economic development: The Christians and animists happen to live in areas rich with oil deposits. As a result, foreign oil companies (U.S. entities are barred from doing business in Sudan) have a shared interest with the Sudanese government in getting access to such areas so as to explore and exploit their reserves. The Khartoum regime clears promising locations of the local population -- either by killing them outright, enslaving them or terrifying them into fleeing. In return, oil concerns like Talisman Energy of Canada and China National Petroleum Company provide cash flow to an otherwise impoverished government, which has stated publicly that these oil-generated proceeds are enabling it to wage war in southern Sudan." ₃

2001-SEP: President Bush appointed Senator John Danforth as Special Envoy to the Sudan. ₆

2002-MAY-16, the president asked Danforth to continue to serve as a peace envoy. ₇

2002-OCT-7: The U.S. House of Representatives passed a replacement bill by a vote of 359-8. It passed the Senate unanimously on OCT-9. President Bush signed the Sudan Peace Act into law on 2002-OCT-21. The Act requires the President to certify every six months that the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) are negotiating in good faith. "If the President finds that the Khartoum government is not negotiating in good faith, or has been interfering in aid efforts, it can seek sanctions from the United Nations that include an arms embargo, actively oppose loans and credit and take steps to deny oil revenue." ₈

The reaction of the Sudanese government was negative. "President and Chairman of the ruling National Congress Umar Al-Bashir was quoted as saying that the act undermines the peace efforts in his nation. 'Why should such an act be issued at a time when we are negotiating and when we have overcome major obstacles? ...We are saying that the objective of this act is to ensure that the people in Sudan do not achieve peace'." ₈