The ‘Indigenous Languages’ in the Current Post-Civil War Interim Constitution of the Sudan: The Political and the Practical

As can be seen from the title, my presentation intends to review the new language policy agreed upon in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) (2005) and endorsed in the Interim Constitution of the Republic of the Sudan (2006). This is with the intention to assess the actual gains of the indigenous languages – which 87 out of ca. 125 belong to the Nilo-Saharan family – from this new language policy, in which the roles of the two languages for wider communication (i.e. Arabic and English) are also bluntly emphasized. Reviewing the previous language policies, I will also try to discern the political, social and economical constraints that may militate against the implementation of this policy satisfactorily. My arguments will take into consideration Fairclough‟s (1989) remark that, “language is certainly involved in power, and struggles for power”.