SUDAN-SOUTH SUDAN BOUNDARY DISPUTE IBESANMI BOLUWATIFE, OLADIPUPO MICHEAL ET AL University of Lagos, Lagos Nigeria ABSTRACT Border Disputes in Africa is a common trend in todays world and continues to impede on African unity and integration. This is because most African boundaries created by the Europeans were artificial and arbitrary in nature. In fact, these boundaries were not clearly demarcated nor delineated. The process of creating these boundaries was at best artificial as Lord Salisbury stated we have been drawing lines upon maps where no white man foot ever trod. The implication of these is that the Europeans never knew exactly where these boundaries were. More alarming is the fact that groups with the same cultural affinities as a result of partition were separated from their brothers and lumped together with different cultures. These ill defined, poorly demarcated boundaries of many African States became borders that have generated disputes and conflicts in Africa. This Paper using Sudan-South Sudan border dispute as a case study highlights the nature and causes of the boundary dispute in Sudan. It traces the evolution of these boundary problems back to the colonial period when Sudan was first partitioned. This paper concludes with the measures put in place at resolving the dispute as well as proposes appropriate recommendations. Key words: Abyei, Heglig, Kirr, SAF, 1.INTRODUCTION Boundary Disputes is a global phenomenon that has been in existence for centuries and as time has evolved it’s taken different forms, it transcends across continents as such it’s of no surprise that even till date several African nations has at one point been involved in one form of disputes that revolves around boundary allocation and demarcation. For the purpose of this paper, the focus is on Sudan a country located in the Northern region of Africa which has been riddled with civil wars for years and has experienced contentious boundary issues with its neighbour the sovereign country of South Sudan. This constant battle was precipitated by the separation of South Sudan from Sudan in 2011 to become an independent and sovereign country. Interestingly most of the borders between these two countries have been and is still disputed and has resulted in series of violent clashes been that a precise location of the boundary between the two countries has not been agreed upon or physically demarcated on land (ground). Before Sudanese independence from the British on January 1 st 1956, an approximate border line was drawn up on the map known as the “1956 border,” the map indicated the route of an old internal boundary between the northern and southern regions of colonial Sudan. But its implementation was so messy that both the North and the South couldn’t reach any amicable settlement and agree on how much is been disputed. The “1956 border” and separation of the South from the North set the tone for the unending boundary disputes and clashes ongoing in the Sudanese region. 1 Events have shown that there are certain areas that are hotly contested and widely acknowledged disputed areas along the boundary between North and South Sudan. They include the areas of Heglig (Panthou), Abyei area, Kafia Kingi area, Jau, Bahr el Arab (Kiir) River, Kaka, Megenis mountains and Jodha. 2 Thus the ill definition of the entire boundaries between these two separately sovereign regions is the main supply motivating each side to choose conflict over cooperation. The Northern and Southern part of 1