Juba Port, South Sudan

Twenty-four-year old Enrico Wek (left) arrives in Juba after two weeks of traveling in a crammed barge along the Nile from Khartoum, along with his family and around 700 other people returning to Juba. Faced with the possibility that they will not be allowed to return to the north of Sudan, they have brought everything they own and now face an uncertain future.

On 9 July 2011, six months after nearly 99 percent of four million voters in a referendum opted for secession from the North, the Republic of South Sudan came into being, becoming the world’s 193rd nation. The run-up to independence witnessed a place and a people in transformation, as some of the millions of exiles who had sought asylum in neighboring countries returned to rebuild their communities and construct their identity as a unified nation. The new government has the task of developing law-enforcing institutions such as the police and prison services out of a rebel movement, and from people trained as combatants, not peacekeepers.