Statelessness and mass expulsion in Sudan: a reassessment of the international law

Abstract

Following the secession of South Sudan from Sudan on July 9, 2011, both South Sudan and Sudan have passed new citizenship laws with dramatic effects for the rights of individuals on both sides of the new border. While in Sudan this consists of a series of amendments to the 1994 Sudanese Nationality Act,the new South Sudan government has promulgated an entirely new Nationality Act. I have recently published an extended analysis of the resulting legal regime that describes its key features in some detail. This paper builds on that initial analysis through an examination of the key resulting protection threats for those South Sudanese remaining in Sudan and, in particular, resulting de jure and de facto statelessness and the threat of mass expulsion. As such, this article is intended to serve as something of a companion piece to my earlier paper. While that paper examined the operation of the post-secession nationality regime in detail, this article explains the resources available at public international law to address the key failures of that regime.