Wikipedia
The Abyei Area is an area of (4,072 sq mi) in Sudan accorded "special administrative status" by the 2004 Protocol on the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict (Abyei Protocol) in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the Second Sudanese Civil War. The capital of Abyei Area is Abyei Town. Under the terms of the Abyei Protocol, the Abyei Area was declared, on an interim basis, to be simultaneously part of the states of South Kurdufan and Northern Bahr el Ghazal.
In contrast to the borders of the former district, the Abyei Protocol defined the Abyei Area as "the area of the nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms transferred to Kordofan in 1905". In 2005, a multinational border commission established this to be those portions of Kordofan south of 10°22′30″ N. However, following continued disputes that erupted into violence and threatened the CPA, an international arbitration process redrew Abyei's boundaries in 2009 to make it significantly smaller, extending no further north than 10°10′00" N. This revised border has now been endorsed by all parties to the dispute.
Abyei (also spelled Abyēy; ) is a north-south border town currently in the Abyei Area of the South Kordofan region, in the south of Northern Sudan. The U.N. estimated the town's population at around 20,000 previous to May 2011 events.
The oil-producing and fertile Abyei Area, with Abyei town as its center, is a disputed territorial point of contention in the July 2011 secession of South Sudan process.