Southern Sudan referendum 2011

The Sudan Media and Elections Consortium (SMEC) was established in January 2010 to implement a project on media and elections in Sudan. Following the successful completion and reporting on the media coverage of the April 2010 elections, the SMEC was once more contracted to undertake a number of media related activities in relation to the Southern Sudan Referendum of January 2011. Monitoring media coverage of politics and referendum was one of the two components of the project in parallel with a training and mentoring programme for journalists and media houses.

This final report is a consolidated version of all the reports issued in the course of the monitoring period. It presents the main monitoring findings of the media’s coverage of the referendum campaign, the campaign moratorium day, the voting week and the post-referendum phase from 26 January to 10 April 2011.