Title: Rights and Decisions to Return: Internally Displaced Persons in Post-war Sudan
Abstract: The previous chapter by Kibreab focused on the situation of Eritrean refugees in the Sudan. In this chapter I examine the question of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan, which is now a concern of many actors (the Government of National Unity, donors, UN agencies and NGOs and civil society organizations) who are involved in making the post-war arrangements for the country. With more than five million internally displaced persons, Sudan is one of the highest producers of IDPs in the world. The spells of drought during the early 1980s, the civil war in the south (1983–2005) and the ongoing crisis in Darfur are the main reasons for displacement. Although incidents of displacement in Sudan go back in history and have received extensive academic attention (Abu Salim 1979: 44–6; Galal El-Din 1973; McLoughlin 1970: 113), the question of the rights of internally displaced persons has been largely ignored at the levels of both research and policy. Thus far, national policy has merely consisted of ad hoc ministerial decrees tending to respond to emergencies in the chain of events related to displacement (Assal 2006a). The few policies that have been adopted centre around meeting the needs of IDPs (though not adequately), a goal that is shared, to varying degrees, by the state, international agencies and NGOs. Although there has been a substantial body of research on the situation of IDPs in Sudan, most of it does not probe rights directly and does not make inroads into policy processes in ways that enable the systematic institutionalization and realization of rights.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 4
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