fRom thE CountRy to thE toWn 127During 2009, a series of massive demolitions and relocations took place
in a range of squatter settlements in Greater Khartoum. Inhabitants of
Soba Al-Aradi, Salama and Mayo, south of the city, were relocated further
south in Jebel Awlia, in so-called peace villages, and in Al-Fatih. Al-Fatih
is forty kilometres north of Omdurman. The population there has now
grown to over 300,000.
Popular committees run the show in Al-Fatih. Their key responsibility
is to issue official papers for inhabitants of the resettlement site, a service
that must be paid for. Such documents (especially residence certificates)
are necessary to access services and get paper work done within the
bureaucracy. But most people have no idea how these committees are
selected and do not deem them representative. Building plots are avail-
able, but few can afford them. Of those who can, many leave, while
continuing to rent out the houses they build. Perched on the very edge of
the city, they have lost their access to the job market, and to their social
networks. Many must return to their former homes to gain a livelihood.
And some end up squatting again, in new social housing on the land
they previously inhabited but were forced to leave. Although they remain
exposed to the risk of further evictions, they see it as a better option than
remaining in the sites to which they were relocated.ConclusionOver the past two decades there has been a change in the attitude of
IDPs and other migrants in urban centres in Sudan. In the 1990s most
were trying to secure the basic needs of food and shelter. Since 2003 they
have been increasingly claiming social and political rights. While this is a
significant shift, it does not mean that their basic needs are now secure.
Most of the new urban migrants in Sudan are barely integrated into
the social and political system of the cities where they have settled. For
social survival they depend on networks of kinship inherited from their
communities of origin, For economic survival, they engage in unskilled
work with long hours, often far from their homes and involving longThe Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors periods of travel. They rely, often, on the labour of children: nearly
(www.riftvalley.net).