Sudan election body and Diaspora dilemma

Statelessness: the National Elections Commission Dilemma and the most serious issue facing the Sudanese Diaspora

By Khadiga Safwat

December 1, 2009 — It is welcome that the Sudanese authorities out here can be convinced to respond to popular pressure. They may even adopt some of popular demands and/or claim them as their own -notwithstanding that they may not acknowledge the source. People have been lobbying for and mobilising the Sudanese in the Diaspora since mid 2008 around most of those demands that are now being adopted by most. However the welcomed response by the authorities seems to stop short of one of the most important demands the Sudanese in the Diaspora continue to reiterate. Failure to meet that demand will affect what can be estimated at millions of stateless individuals the majority of whom is particularly southern.

The concept of carrying documents is something relatively recent in the life of the Sudanese. The majority of the Northern Sudanese generation before the last did not have birthday certificates. When people were encouraged to secure such certificates, most of the certificates were issued bearing an estimated birth date. To many the best date they could think of was the 1st. of January, the Independence Day. Accordingly, there arose a whole generation of Northern Sudanese who were born on the 1st January followed by an equally fabricated year. What about the southern and western and eastern Sudanese then?

According to a reliable source there are, in Bolton- Lancashire – UK alone, an estimate 400 stateless Sudanese, meaning persons without any papers on them or a paternal relative to testify on their behalf to prove they belong to a certain state or country of origin. Bolton is only one of many towns and in that it is a very small town. Most importantly, Bolton is not an isolated case. It expresses a feature common to many other towns in UK and elsewhere.

The conditions laid By the National Elections Commission for acquiring the Sudanese nationality cannot be satisfied by many Sudanese in the Diaspora. The very nature of the Diaspora is that by which an individual-having been pushed out of his home under extraordinary situations, like wars, draught, famine etc, that individual will not be expected to have identification documents on him; that is, if he ever had them in the first place. The southern and western Sudanese have had more than their fair share of the above if there is such thing as a fair share of wars, drought and famine.

Based on the above If the elections are to be transparent and fair, the case of the stateless persons has to be resolved and soon. We are running out of time. And on this note we have to have the registration period extended to what it should have in the first place have been. The state should not hide behind the National Election Commission to seek an excuse to avoid taking the right decision with regard to the legitimate grievances expressed by its citizens. More importantly, the state or whosoever is in the position of the state should not behave like its ancient counterpart, the tributary state where the ruler, the pharaoh, the sultan, Make claimed to own all what is on earth on behalf of the Gods. However, it should be remembered that same pharaoh, the sultan, the Mak was the father of all his people. As such he made the river flow and guaranteed a faire price of Durah in the market

The state should not be seen to penalise its adversaries by denying them nationality of their own homeland, a condition that renders them stateless by their own state. This has at times been a policy of certain regimes and it should not be allowed to continue to be. The first military regime was known to do that. You can find yourself being the odd one out n the whole of you extended family or clan who is discriminately disfavoured. One can claim to personally be witness to that outrageous behaviour by the state where government disfavour of the opposition is personalised, where the state’s animosity to its foes bends the rules against them to which one can literarily testify. Can there be anything more bizarre, indeed outrageous behaviour than that by any state?

It is obvious that most of the potentially stateless would be the Southern Sudanese. Those northern Sudanese who have no IDs on them can only be those who had to flee the country in the face of some atrocity. The southern Sudanese are very unlikely to vote for a MONDOKORO (northern) President. Those who have had to flee the country may just as well not vote to bring back the existing president.

Rendering those Sudanese mere faceless numerical accumulations will deprive them of nationality hence of the right to vote. This may in no way be interpreted in favour of the government. Indeed that will provide fodder for the ongoing fire on the credibility of the whole process of democracy. The Sudan is facing THE most serious turning point in its modern history. It is a matter of life or death, a matter of the Sudan or something else God alone knows what it is likely to be

The author is based in Oxford – United Kingdom he is reachable at [email protected]