Juba, South Sudan
An officer of the Southern Sudan Prison Service rests with her baby at the prison headquarters in Juba. The prison officers are permitted to take their children to work because there is no childcare available.
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.
