It Is Not Yet ‘Uhuru’: Overcoming the Challenges of Citizenship and Nationality Questions in Post-Separation Sudan and South Sudan

Ferdinand O Ottoh,Solomon Oladede Akinboye

doi:10.32890/jis.12.2016.7974

Abstract

This paper focuses on the nationality and citizenship crisis in post-separation Sudan. The paper argues that the unresolved issues in the agreement, especially the issue of nationality and citizenship are serious threats to the stability of the new state of South Sudan. Both North Sudan and South Sudan have demonstrated a lack of political will to resolve the nationality and citizenship problem. This explains why they were not able to adopt a common legal framework that will help to address the age-long problem instead of each adopting new nationality laws. The paper adopts the historical and institutional-legalistic approach in the discourse to situate the problem. It argues therefore, that the citizenship problem will continue in a system that is stratified along ethnic/racial and religious lines as epitomized in Sudan. We conclude that it is the resolution of outstanding issues of nationality and citizenship question that will help to sharpen the pattern of state-ethnic relations in the separated countries of north and south Sudan. With independence granted to Southern Sudan, the crisis of citizenship remains both in the north and the south.

Highlights

There is the need to turn to history for the nationality and citizenship question in Sudan with the view to understand the current situation in the post-separation era
Understanding the historical and materialistic context of the Sudanese state in relation to citizenship will help to sharpen the pattern of state-ethnic relations in the Arabsdominated political system
Any serious effort to resolve the citizenship question must be based on establishing the relationship between the citizens and the state in post-war Sudan

Summary

Introduction

There is the need to turn to history for the nationality and citizenship question in Sudan with the view to understand the current situation in the post-separation era. Defective citizenship laws in Africa made many people to owe allegiance to their ethnic origin rather to their state; ethnic identity becomes stronger than national citizenship This was the situation in Sudan before and after the separation of South Sudan from Sudan. The incorporation of Darfur into the national Sudanese process polarized the Arabs and the Africans This explains why it is alluded that organic citizenship was destroyed while ethnic citizenship was promoted as was constructed by the colonial rule. In 1994, the Transitional National Assembly enacted another Nationality Act which remained in force until the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 that brought to an end decades of war which followed another Nationality law in 2011 after the separation of South Sudan It provided that a person was Sudanese if he was born in Sudan or his father was born in Sudan and he or his direct ancestors had been residents in Sudan since 31 December 1897. Our task is to set certain parameters for overcoming the challenges of citizenship crisis

Nationality and Citizenship Contextualized

It Is Not Yet Uhuru with the Separation of South Sudan

The Implications of New Nationality Laws in Sudan and South Sudan

Overcoming the Challenges of Citizenship

Conclusion