Cultural Identity, Diversity Management Policies and Conflicts in Sudan

The ongoing war in Sudan has been qualified as the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world. Unfortunately, this conflict is the last one of a long and cruel series of civil wars. Among the several factors behind these conflicts, a very relevant one is the mismanagement of the cultural diversity of the country. While some scholars had analysed how ethnic relations in Sudan had an impact on the political problems, this study explores the opposite direction and outlines, with special focus on the educational policies of the XX and the XXI centuries, how the politics of imposing an identity on culturally diverse populations has tensioned the relation between the centre and the peripheries in the last decades. This tension also plays a paramount role in the ongoing civil war started on April 15, 2023. The attempt to build the national identity on the pillars of Arab culture and political Islam failed to create a shared cultural identity. The article analyzes that attempt in the framework of the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity created by Bennet, the classification of policies to deal with cultural management defined by Kymlicka and the concept of cultural identity as defined by Stuart Hall. Finnally, it proposes an intercultural approach to transform cultural heritage and education into an instrument of reconciliation and integration, and the multicultural reality of the country into a platform for a dialogue that produces a shared concept of identity and sustainable peace.