Why Should Sudan Hurry With Ending Citizenship of South Sudanese? - AllAfrica.com

Although it was an agreement between the two nations, Sudan and South Sudan, to handle the citizenship issue in their respective territories responsibly and allowing Sudan to reassert its position as regards the estimated 500,000 South Sudanese plus who are still there some not ready to come to South Sudan immediately for several reasons while majority of them are willing to come to the lands of their ancestors, Al Bashir and his Islamist ministers seem pessimistic about the future of these former citizens in their former country.

They are saying that once 8th April is over, the half a million South Sudanese found in all parts of the Sudan would be considered foreigners. Consideration as foreigners should not make the government to mistreat them because in Sudan today there are many foreigners who are being accorded residence and South Sudanese will not be the first foreigners in Sudan.

While Juba has announced its policy in regards to the Sudanese citizens who are still in South Sudan after the country achieved its independence that they will be treated with kindness and are free to live in this nation, and President Kiir had directed that they be treated well in all the ten states where they may be living, it is strange that the authorities in Khartoum are poised to treat people who were once the citizens of Sudan as foreigners who may lose a lot of their entitlements such as their properties which they had acquired legally in Sudan.

Majority of the South Sudanese who reside in the outlaying residential areas in the outskirts of the three towns of Omdurman, Khartoum North (Bahary) and Khartoum such as El Haj Yousif, Jireif Sherg, Jiref Harb, Fitihab, Soworat of Omdurman, Kalakalat, Mayo, Soba Aradi and Hella, Ingaz etc. have houses which they built and some have small businesses which they established during over twenty years stay in Sudan.

Although such fixed assets cannot be practically brought to the South, the government in Khartoum should use civilized norms of handling the properties of these people and allow them to dispose of them in legal ways so that they would not go with much losses. The government of Al Bashir should visit international laws and use them in dealing with those South Sudanese who are still not repatriated from Sudan and who are still their guests and treat them so.

Political recriminations for these people or their fellow South Sudanese for choosing independence should not be the reason for taking unfriendly course of action against them because self-determination was an internationally accepted exercise for people who are aggrieved for political, economic and social factors and its outcome should not be used in handling their status issues.

It is said that Sudan has lost economically because the South has gone with more than 75% of the oil wealth which was once in a pool for all. But if the Sudanese view it critically they have not lost because independence of the South was not triggered by the presence of oil but for harmonizing the living conditions of the citizens of the two nations which had been for over fifty years in political and administrative shambles caused by intermittent civil war the factors of which successive governments not only that of Al Bashir is aware of.

Now that these wars are stopped forever the two nations and their peoples should rejoice and now strive to develop good neighbourliness and promote trade from which their people will benefit and prosper. These South Sudanese who are still in Sudan should be treated with kindness as Juba is already showering the Sudanese who are mostly traders with flowers of peaceful coexistence.

The assurance which Al Bashir gave to Thabo Mbeki the senior AU envoy that his government would treat the South Sudanese IDPs kindly should be the actual policy towards this matter not what the NCP Ministers and other officials say.