Juba, South Sudan
A plane flies over the Nile River, one of the national symbols of Sudan.
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.
