The Sudan Handbook

fRom thE CountRy to thE toWn 127

During 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.

Conclusion

Over 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 long

The 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).