Internally Displaced and Voluntary Return in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of Northern and Southern Sudan

Abstract:     
At last, the long civil conflict between Northern and Southern Sudan is coming to a doubtful end with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. However, there are many barriers on the thorny road from political, economic and social aspects. One of them is that there hundreds of thousands of citizens of the South who were internally displaced and migrated to the Northern Sudan. People from the Dinka Njok tribe of Bahr El Gazal province are among them. They were encouraged and enticed to return to their region by the interim government of the South. However, it was noticed that many of them returned to the North after short time. The main reason was the difficult conditions in Southern Sudan, economic, social and political. Most had no homes or means of production or basic services. Such problems will not vanish and they shall remain to hinder future social stability in the South.

The date of South secession is coming soon at the 9th July 2011. However, there is the problem of people from the south who live in the north. Some of them where behaving as natural citizens and had jobs or education or even lived for decades and centuries in the north. Others were internally displaced people, but both are compelled to return to their homes in the south as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by the twp parties, North and South have stressed on. That created inevitable another displacement or uprooting for them and definitely another human tragedy. This paper is part of a field survey conducted on the displaced people from Southern Sudan who were encouraged to return to the south before and after the referendum for secession of unity in one nation. The motive behind that survey was to study a phenomenon that emerged for those displaced due to security and economic reasons. The phenomenon was that many of then returned to the north after financial support given for them for voluntary return to the south. The efforts to study reasons behind that were individual efforts and finance as an academic assessment of why people of some region refuse to return. An analysis for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by parties the Government of Sudan and Sudan Popular Liberation Movement was first carried out as a background for the study. Dinka Ngok, the selected tribal group who lives in Abeyi district were surveyed to investigate why they selected to go north and why they did not settle when they were helped for a voluntary return. The results show that the Abeyi district still lacks basic services and living conditions are very difficult. Besides, they did not believe that security conditions are suitable for living there with the continuous conflict and hidden anger. The study also confirm the indispensable and vital role of the NGO's in helping and supporting the internally displaced people in Sudan with specific mention of the people from the south.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 125

Keywords: Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement, Internally Displaced, Voluntary Return, Civil Conflict, Poverty

JEL Classification: N3, N37, O1, O10, O15, D7, D70, D74

working papers series