SOLVING STATELESSNESS their territory, even if it means formalising their presence with the offer of citizenship. 5. Sudan: Moving the boundaries of belonging In Sudan, the secession of part of its territory into the new State of South Sudan in 2011 created a population of several hundred thousand who continue to live in Sudan and are now at risk of statelessness. This is the result of a new citizenship law which provides for revocation of Sudanese nationality if the person has a right to South Sudanese nationality, regardless of whether or not they have actually acquired it. Furthermore, because there is no mechanism for confirming nationality, persons with a connection to South Sudan risk being made stateless if the Sudanese government believes that they have a claim to South Sudanese citizenship, but the South Sudanese government disagrees. Prior to the referendum on the independence of South Sudan, conservative estimates put the number of Sudanese of southern origin living in Khartoum at 500,000, although the figure was likely to have been in the millions.30 Although some had come to take up jobs as professionals, civil servants and business people, the vast majority had fled as a result of the longest-running conflict in the country between what is now South Sudan and the centralised Sudanese State (often referred to inaccurately as “the north”). Prior to the South’s independence, therefore, they were technically internally displaced persons (IDPs). However, instead of finding refuge in Khartoum, they found themselves living as outsiders in the political epicentre of a regime that had justified war on their communities on the basis of its inherent cultural and religious superiority. While many benefited from the educational and other opportunities presented by the urban environment and re-contoured their lives to the dominant culture, many others found themselves living in the margins of the city, de facto second class citizens and subject to myriad violations of human rights.31 The war officially ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) by the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) on 9 January 2005. With the agreement of the CPA, a new era appeared to have dawned, with a new framework 30 31 United States Institute for Peace, Briefing, Six Important Issues for Sudan and its Future, 2009. See for example, Africa Rights, Sudan’s Invisible Citizens, 1995. 89