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On September 25, Reuters reported worrying comments from the Sudanese Information Minister Kamal Mohamed Obeid related to southerners living in north Sudan if the south votes to secede as expected in the January 2011 referendum. According to the report Mr. Obeid, from the National Congress Party (NCP), said that “If the result of the referendum was separation, then the southerners will not enjoy citizenship rights in the north as they would be considered citizens of another state.” He apparently went on to say "They will not enjoy citizenship rights, jobs or benefits, they will not be allowed to buy or sell in Khartoum market…. We will not even give them a needle in the hospital.”

These comments are extremely worrying, in that they give substance to something that had been long feared among southern communities. In June, Refugees International interviewed a number of southerners in Khartoum and heard these concerns regularly repeated – people worried there might be a backlash, potential violence, even forced expulsion if the south gained independence. Others felt it might not come to this but, as one put it, “life would become very unpleasant.”

Yet amidst all the rumors and fear, it has often been hard to point to concrete evidence of any type of actual plan the NCP might have for southerners if the south seceded, and likewise, any plan the southern government might have for northerners. No citizenship agreement has been reached and the parties have been fairly quiet on the long term intentions they have on criteria for respective citizenship and nationality rights. The Government of Sudan is not a signatory to the international conventions on statelessness and the Government of Southern Sudan has not indicated whether it will accede to the convention if it becomes a sovereign entity. Since June, RI has called for clear and public commitments from both sides that they would neither commit nor tolerate abuses against minority populations on their territories in the run up to and after the referendum.

Shortly after the Information Minister’s statement, the Sudan Tribune reported that President Omar al-Bashir had refuted these remarks – instead pledging that he would be directly responsible for protecting southerners in the north. This follows September remarks by southern President Salva Kiir at the U.S. Institute of Peace that he was committed to protecting the security of all Sudanese in the south, including northerners. The statements by Bashir and Kiir are an important first step. They at least provide a basis on which Sudan’s international partners and guarantors of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) can unite in drawing a red line under certain behavior.

However, statements alone are not enough. The parties could do more to demonstrate their commitment to the protection of minority communities by putting in place concrete provisions to permit freedom of movement, residency, employment and property ownership for all Sudanese at least until such time that a formal citizenship agreement has been reached and people on both sides have been given sufficient time to regularize their status. This should not require extensive negotiation, it would essentially be a prolonging of the status quo. Each side could even demonstrate its good faith by doing so unilaterally – a move which would diminish the increasingly widespread impression that citizenship rights are being held back by the parties as potential bargaining chips on other matters.

And if agreements fail? It is certainly not a given that all northerners want southerners expelled and vice versa. It seems increasingly clear that there are different strains of thought on this even within the NCP, and many analysts have flagged up the importance of low-cost labor services that southerners in Khartoum provide. The real question is which view will ultimately prevail on both sides of the border, one of tolerant pragmatism or narrow-minded nationalism? The answer to this depends significantly on the circumstances in which the referendum is held and how “messy” the separation turns out to be. The worse the terms of separation are, the more the relations between the two sides deteriorate. It will then be that much more difficult to ensure that public emotion and national pride are not manipulated by different political forces, leading to knee-jerk decisions that ruin the lives of potentially millions of people.