THE STATE
The new 2005 Constitution establishes that Sudan is a federal republic, with a president and a bicameral parliament elected by universal suffrage. Meanwhile, on the basis of the peace agreements (Comprehensive Peace Agreement, CPA) signed in Nairobi (Kenya) in 2005 between the central government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), a National Assembly was created, whose members are nominated by the president. The Sudanese judicial system is based on British Common Law and Islamic law, the shari’ah. At the head of the judicial system, which is completely independent from the other powers of the state, is the President of the Republic. Civil justice is administered by the High Court of Justice, which is made up of the Court of Appeal and the High Court, and by the Provincial Courts, which in turn are divided into provincial and district courts. For the Muslim population, justice is often administered by Islamic courts, which are also divided into three levels of judgment: the kadis courts, the High Court and the Court of Appeal; at the top of the judiciary is the Grand Kadi. Since 1991, Islamic courts have no jurisdiction in the southern regions of the country, mostly animist and Christian. The criminal procedure system is also divided into three levels of judgment: major courts, minor courts and courts of magistrates. The death penalty is in effect. The defense of the country is entrusted to the armed forces, divided into the three traditional weapons, to which must be added the popular defense force, a paramilitary organization. The military service is compulsory and lasts 3 years. The considerable differences in ethnic, linguistic, religious, customs and traditions between the North and the South of the country cause serious imbalances in the school organization; however, great efforts have been made to achieve the main objectives: the fight against illiteracy and the training of technical cadres necessary for economy of the country. In fact, if in 1995 the percentage of illiterate people was 53.9%, in 2005 it had dropped to 41.4%. According to andyeducation, primary education is compulsory and free from 7 to 14 years old. The secondary school, which lasts from 14 to 17 years, has three courses: general, technical and professional. In Khartoum there is a Technical Institute, one of the most important in the sector and which also includes a section for the training of technical teachers, a university established in 1956 and a branch of the University of Cairo founded (1955) following a agreement with Egypt. In 1975 the universities of Juba (now the capital of South Sudan) and Gezira, as well as Omdurman, where the first university open to women was created.
TERRITORY: MORPHOLOGY
The borders correspond to those of the former Anglo-Egyptian condominium and include a large Saharan desert surface in the North (Nubian Desert, essentially rocky, E of the Nile, while the desert section to the W of the river is part of the vast Libyan Desert) and sub-Saharan, which then gives way, towards the 17th parallel, to the steppes of the Sahel and, towards the 13th parallel, to the savannas. The Sudanese territory is largely included in the middle Nile basin; structurally it corresponds to a large depression area between the reliefs of the so-called “High Africa” (Ethiopian Highlands and Kenyan-Ugandan highlands) on one side and the same elevations that, on the western side, separate the Nilotic basin from those of Chad and Congo. The findings are therefore all found in the peripheral sections of the country. They also appear in the north-eastern section, where the Sudanese territory overlooks for approx. 300 km to the Red Sea: located close to the coast, usually straight and imposing, they consist of mountainous edges (Jabal Oda, 2259 m) which, as in Egypt, represent the escarpment originated with the gigantic fracture that divided the Africa from Arabian Peninsula. The chain that rises along the Red Sea (Jabal Hamoyet, 2780 m) is made up of crystalline schists and granite rocks. On the western and central western side (Darfur, Kurdufān) the Nubian sandstones with tabular shapes prevail, located at an average height of 700 m, however dominated in Darfur by buildings of volcanic origin, including the imposing Cenozoic massif of Jabal Marrah (active, however, until the Pleistocene period), which reaches 3088 m; the territory still rises to the SW along the border with the Central African Republic (Jabal Dana in Dar Fertit, 1173 m). Outside these marginal reliefs, the Sudanese territory is therefore made up of flat expanses, largely corresponding to the continental Penepian Archaeozoic, which sometimes emerges with surfaces of crystalline rocks, as in the Inselberge of Kurdufān or Darfur. Tabular formations of different rocks are superimposed on it: to the N the red Nubian sandstones, to the NW Jurassic layers, in the center-south, in correspondence with the depressions of the Nile, sedimentary rocks of the Cenozoic and recent alluvial flows. The latter are particularly extensive in the area where the two Niles meet and in the vast depression of southern Sudan, the so-called Sudd: it is interesting that it was formed by subsidence as a result of the aforementioned gigantic Cenozoic fracture (the Syro-African trench), a grandiose perturbation to which, in addition to the reliefs along the Red Sea, also the Sudanese volcanic areas, such as the Jabal Marrah, are linked.
