Sudan: Khartoum Says No to Dual Citizenship for Southerners

By Staff Writer

Khartoum — Sudan’s National Congress Party (NCP) government has vowed it will not grant dual citizenship to people of South Sudan, in contrast with pledges by South Sudan to grant citizenship to northern Sudanese.

The two neighboring countries has a raft of issues unresolved, citizenship being  one of the key agendas, in an effort to disengage the two countries after the south became independent on 9 July.

“The government will not extend dual nationality to South Sudanese because southerners voted overwhelmingly to split from the north,” said Ibrahim Ghandur, spokesman for Sudan's National Congress Party.

As an extension to that effect the northern officials maintained that southerners in the north would not be allowed to become citizens. Khartoum already terminated the employment of southern Sudanese in the government and the military.

The Sudanese cabinet this month approved changes to the immigration law which would automatically strip all Southerners of their citizenship though it is not clear how this would be practically implemented.

According to Ghandur, if South Sudanese were granted dual citizenship, seven million  southerners would remain in the north, leaving South Sudan's ruling party SPLM in charge of vast natural resources and a much smaller population as few as 2million.

Many southerners fled to the north during the more than two-decade of north-south civil wars which raged mainly in the south and devastated the region. The war ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005.

The NCP official further said that the issue of dual-citizenship would be sorted out as soon as borders between the two countries are established and the nature of bilateral relationship are known.

Meanwhile the neighboring countries are still working to resolve other critical issues including oil revenue-sharing, border disputes and the future of the contested Abyei region.