According to the referendum commission, anyone who has a parent or ancestor from a southern tribe indigenous to the south can vote on January 9. Also anyone who has been permanently resident, or whose parents or grandparents have been in the south since the January 1, 1956 independence can vote.
Voting will occur not only in southern Sudan, but throughout Sudan for people of southern origin, and in eight countries that have large populations of southern Sudanese: Australia, Canada, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
See Al-Jazeera’s Q & A on ‘The road to the referendum’ here.