SUDAN CITIZENSHIP SYMPOSIUM KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY MS. ERIKA FELLER ASSISTANT HIGH COMMISSIONER - PROTECTION, UNHCR Khartoum, 6 November 2010 subject is of concern to UNHCR and to our partners in the humanitarian community, in our efforts to support the Governments of National Unity and of South Sudan to build their capacities to protect their citizens. Two million internally displaced persons have already returned home and they need to be able to re-establish their lives not only in peace and safety, but also on the basis of legality and belonging. Just as our IDP mandate, so too our refugee mandate is directly implicated in the process of addressing these issues. Since the CPA, 330,000 Southern Sudanese refugees have returned home from exile, with the support of UNHCR. However 70,000 more refugees remain in neighbouring asylum countries. Their decisions on whether and when to return will depend on how they assess the outcomes of the CPA, including the arrangements that will guarantee citizenship rights. It is crucial that their voluntary return is sustainable for the future, and UNHCR is required by its refugee protection and solutions mandate to assist the concerned authorities to make this a reality. UNHCR is a humanitarian, impartial and neutral UN agency which has been present in Sudan for more than forty years. The political outcome of the referendum is not our concern. That is a decision for the southern Sudanese. Whatever the outcome of the referendum, we are, though, concerned that hundreds of thousands of Sudanese who originate in other parts of the country and find themselves on the opposite side of a new border should not become victims of partition and lose the basic protections of any State. The inclusiveness of the referendum process, enabling eligible refugees and IDPs to exercise their civic right to participate is hence of direct interest for us. In this regard, both CPA parties and the international community clearly have a crucial role to play in making this happen, and at the same time reassuring constituents that all southerners can freely exercise their right to vote, and that basic rights of all persons within north and south Sudan will be protected following the referendum. It is unfortunate that recent delays in reaching agreement on basic referendum processes and procedures have created uncertainty and fear among southerners living in the north, evidenced by the increasing numbers of returns to the south, as well as among northerners in the south and border populations. Our strong hope is that voluntariness, not push factors, will guide decisions about when and where to move. Expectations of this Symposium We hope this symposium will make a valuable contribution to thinking and the search for solutions to these challenges; most importantly, that it will assist the process of framing citizenship arrangements that will meet the needs of all these diverse populations: southerners in the north, northerners in the south, pastoralists and groups living close to the north/south border who may have a history of passing easily across internal state boundaries and for whom this represents a vital element of their lifestyle and a means of sustaining their livelihood. Sudanese expatriates (refugees and migrants) who may have difficulty proving their links with the north or south, where one or more generations have been born abroad, are a further category of persons who must be kept in mind in future citizenship arrangements. 4