SUDAN CITIZENSHIP SYMPOSIUM KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY MS. ERIKA FELLER ASSISTANT HIGH COMMISSIONER - PROTECTION, UNHCR Khartoum, 6 November 2010 Of course, there are still myriad challenges. On the eve of the signing of the CPA six years ago, SPLM leader, John Garang, captured the mood at Naivasha when he said, “We have reached the crest of the last hill in our tortuous ascent to the heights of peace.” Perhaps he was being a little too optimistic when he added, “There are no more hills ahead of us, the remaining ground is flat.” Without question, much work remains in the search for commonality on central issues like border demarcation, the sharing of natural resources and wealth, and importantly for today, future citizenship options, in particular for populations who fled conflict or migrated and re-started their lives in other parts of Sudan. UNHCR and the Global Statelessness Mandate A word is in order about why UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, also concerns itself with such citizenship issues, which are the specific subject of your deliberations. United Nations General Assembly resolutions have entrusted UNHCR with the global mandate to support states in identification, prevention and reduction of statelessness and protection of stateless persons. UNHCR has been given a Convention-linked responsibility to ensure that persons who become stateless receive adequate protection in the states where they reside and that the number of stateless persons is reduced through their acquisition of a citizenship. This mandate has been reconfirmed and further elaborated by UNHCR’s Executive Committee, our governing body of states, which includes the Government of Sudan. The Executive Committee requested UNHCR to provide technical advice to states to adopt and implement safeguards against statelessness, consistent with fundamental principles of international law, including to prevent statelessness resulting from arbitrary deprivation of nationality. This request has been coupled with one to the Executive Committee Member States, including Sudan, to take such measures, not least in the context of state succession. Against this background, UNHCR works closely with governments in many countries around the world to provide technical advice on what safeguards legislation should incorporate to avoid statelessness. The break-up of States, the decolonization process, and the transfer of territory between States, are all situations in which statelessness is an inherent problem. UNHCR is keenly aware of the importance of establishing simple, inclusive, objective and nondiscriminatory rules for citizenship, particularly at the time of state succession. We have learned from experience over the last two decades that when certain people are excluded from citizenship, the costs are high for everyone: for stateless people who face obstacles to enjoyment of their rights and for governments which sooner or later will need to take action to integrate stateless people or face the consequences. There are two major differences between the situation now in Sudan and the cases of State succession which occurred in the 1990s. The first is that we now have far more expertise than we did then. We can draw on the lessons of past cases of state successions and avoid making the same 2