Sudan’s southerners to become ‘foreigners’ in less than 9 months

July 25, 2011 (NAIROBI) – The status of southerners in north Sudan will be changed from “citizens” to “foreigners” in nine months, Khartoum announced on Monday as Juba assumed the moral high-ground by reaffirming that the south will give its citizenship to northerners.

Controversy surrounds the fate of nearly one million southern citizens in the rump of Sudan after the South declared independence on 9 July in line with the outcome of the region’s referendum on independence, a vote guaranteed under the 2005 comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended more than two decades of civil war between the two sides.

Sudan’s parliament this month endorsed amendments introduced into the immigration law to strip southerners off their citizenship.

The director of the passports and civil registry, Adam Dalil Adam, on Monday said that southerners in the north will have a period of nine months after which they will be subject to all the laws regulating the presence of “foreigners” in the country.

He told the country’s official news agency SUNA that the period had already commenced with the declaration of South Sudan independence.

Conversely, South Sudan has declared that northerners living in the south will be entitled to obtain South Sudan citizenship.

South Sudan’s information minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin on Monday said that the south’s constitution will accept dual citizenship. He added that northerners living in the south may acquire citizenship as prescribed by the law.

“We would give permanent residence to Northern people who come for investment in addition to skilled workers with certain conditions that would be specified by the Department of Naturalization and Immigration Authority,” he said.

(ST)