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Rethinking Identity, Citizenship, and Violence in Sudan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2012

Amir Idris
Amir Idris*
Affiliation:
Department of African and African American Studies, Fordham University, New York, N.Y.; e-mail: idris@fordham.edu
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Extract

Since its political independence in 1956, Sudan has witnessed the rise of armed ethnic and regional protest movements that have resulted in great human suffering and the largest number of refugees and displaced peoples in Africa. These protest movements have challenged the legitimacy of the independent Sudanese state, led by Arabized and Islamized elites at the pinnacle of power, to extend and define citizenship rights and responsibilities. In Darfur, Southern Kordofan, and Blue Nile, these movements are not only currently demanding equal citizenship rights, but they are also demanding recognition of special rights including claims to land, autonomous government, and the maintenance of ethno-national identities. They are thus opening up a debate about what citizenship entails, particularly in a multicultural context; how the current state reconciles competing claims of citizenship; and what kinds of viable institutional mechanisms are required for an effective relationship between the state, its citizens, and local power structures.

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , May 2012 , pp. 324 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

NOTES

1 See Edward, Jane Kani and Idris, Amir, “The Consequences of Sudan's Civil Wars for the Civilian Population,” in Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Africa: From Slavery Days to Rwandan Genocide, ed. Laband, John (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 2007), 227–52Google Scholar.

2 For example, see Burckhardt, John Lewis, Travels in Nubia (London: Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, 1819)Google Scholar; Ludwig, Emil, The Nile (New York: Viking Press, 1937)Google Scholar; and MacMichael, Harold A., A History of the Arabs in the Sudan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922)Google Scholar.

3 See Idris, Amir, Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005), chap. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For example, see MacMichael, Harold A., A History of the Arabs in the Sudan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922)Google Scholar; Bashir, Mohammed Omer, The Southern Sudan: Background to Conflict (London: Hurst, 1968)Google Scholar; Deng, William and Oduho, Joseph, The Problem of the Southern Sudan (London: London University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Hassan, Yousif Fadl, The Arabs and the Sudan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Ruay, Deng D. Akol, The Politics of Two Sudans (Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1994)Google Scholar; and Wai, Dunstan, The African–Arab Conflict in the Sudan (New York: Africana Pub. Co., 1981)Google Scholar.

5 See Idris, Conflict and Politics of Identity, chap. 2.