Country: Sudan

Group: South Sudanese

Date Finalized: 4/19/21

Team: Colleen Clauss (lead), Natasha Chandra, Omer Carrillo, Therin Carr

At multiple times for multiple reasons, Southern Sudanese people have experienced forced displacement. The evidence supporting this conclusion is rated as a 3.

When Egypt and England colonized Sudan in earlier centuries, Southern Sudan was also included in Sudan’s territory. In August 1955, just before Sudan gained its independence, South Sudanese people began rebelling (Deng, 2007). Southerners feared that the North, which identified strongly as Islamic and Arabic, would enslave and control the South, which identified more strongly as African (Deng, 2007). The war, from 1955-72, killed more than one million people, and forced another one million into refuge in neighboring countries (ibid.). A second conflict from 1983-2005 between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army displaced more than four million internally and forced half a million into refuge (U.S. Department of State, 2018). In 2011, Southern Sudan voted to become a separate country by a referendum (Minority Rights Group, 2017). The two countries did not reach an agreement on how to transition the citizenship of residents, leaving many Sudanese people at risk of statelessness  (ibid.). The Sudanese government stripped citizenship from hundreds of thousands of people thought to be southerners, regardless of whether they had actually sought or obtained South Sudanese citizenship. Hundreds of thousands of residents of Sudan of (real or perceived) southern origin moved south, and tens of thousands were forced to stay in “temporary camps without the resources to continue their journey” (ibid.). The situation briefly improved in 2012 when the two governments reached an agreement for citizens of one country to have the right to reside in the other (ibid.). This progress halted in 2013 as the government of South Sudan dissolved into internal conflict, creating even more refugees (ibid.). Lasting peace has not been achieved in the region since, and the UN estimates that upwards of 20,000 people each year are displaced within Sudan, concentrated in Darfur and the Two Areas region, due to internal conflict (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2020).

The evidence is rated as a 3, because detailed evidence was found in multiple sources: an academic source, a government source, and a well-established source.

Sources

  1. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. (n.d.). 2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: South Sudan. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved April 7, 2021, from https://www.state.gov/reports/2018-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/south-sudan/
  2. Deng, F. M. (2007). Sudan at the Crossroads. MIT Center for International Studies Audit of the Conventional Wisdom, 07(05), 6.
  3. Minority Rights Group. (2017, November). South Sudanese. Minority Rights Group. https://minorityrights.org/minorities/south-sudanese/
  4. U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. (2020). 2019 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Sudan. U.S. Department of State.