Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Southern Sudan was started with the promise of stability

In just over five months, South Sudan will become the youngest country in the world. The final results of an independence referendum confirmed the separation of this region of Sudan, a nation with more land area of Africa. With nearly 44 million people, Sudan will cease to be the tenth largest geographic area with the secession of South Sudan, an autonomous region includes 10 states, which has its capital in the city of Juba.

Juba has great oil wealth, but no skyscrapers embassies and other capitals. Just a year ago was less than five miles of pavement and local files are stored in a tent. Many, however, see great potential and can not wait to control their own destinies. The town of Juba will be promoted to the capital later.

Only South Sudan needs more than its own currency and national anthem: Most roads are terraces, and even aid workers living in shipping containers for use. Two decades of war between the predominantly Muslim north and rebels in the Christian-animist south claimed at least two million lives before a peace agreement signed in 2005 between the central government of Sudan and the autonomous government of the South, according ended the Second Sudanese Civil War, the longest in Africa.

Area residents are jubilant to finally have their own country. Decades of war and poverty have kept the South in a sorry state and its more than eight million people live in one of the least developed regions in the world. The UN says that a 15 year old girl here is more likely to die from complications of pregnancy that the chances of finishing school.

Approximately 85% of the population is illiterate. Furthermore, prices of some goods such as sugar, soap and cooking oil have increased more than 50% in recent weeks. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had accepted the decision of -98.83% of South Sudanese who participated in the consultation voted for independence ", which cleared fears that secession could restart the conflict over control of reserves South oil.

"Today we received these results and we embrace and welcome these findings because they represent the will of the people of the South." Southern authorities argue that the issue of name for the new state remains unresolved, but that may just be South Sudan. The leader of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, has joined the conciliatory environment by promising to help Khartoum in its campaign to obtain the cancellation of their debts and the lifting of international trade sanctions in the coming months.

Both sides avoid major outbreaks of violence in the past five years, but failed to overcome decades of mutual distrust to persuade southerners to embrace unity. His comments reflect the economic dependence between the two regions: the Southern Sudan, which is rich in oil, can not export their resources without using a pipeline that passes through the North.

With the creation of Africa's newest state also begins a time of uncertainty for the fractured region. Many Southerners see voting as an opportunity to end years of repression by the North, which they say extends beyond the years of civil wars to raids of slave traders in the nineteenth century.

The European Union (EU) was among the first to say that he accepted the referendum results, in addition to United Nations. For his part, President Barack Obama said the U.S. aim to recognize Southern Sudan as a sovereign country after 9 July. The U.S. State Department reported that initiated the process to remove Sudan from its list of countries supporting terrorism, but stressed it could only do if you meet all the criteria under the laws of the American nation.

But the West could be handcuffed by the continuing international concern over the conflict in Darfur. Bashir still lives under the threat of arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court on charges of orchestrating genocide in Darfur. The uncertainty surrounding the political and economic stability of both territories over the next five months of intense negotiations over how to share oil revenues and other unresolved issues, because Sudan remains highly dependent on oil revenue and has had difficulty to find other sources of livelihood of its economy to cover the high military costs and the salaries of public employees.

The terms of the effective secession agreement between Sudan and southern Sudan are expected by July 9. Northerners and southerners makers have about five months to agree on the sensitive points such as the delimitation of borders, the sharing of oil revenues or the status of the disputed oil region of Abyei.

An allocation formula for the distribution of national debts, and oil revenues, given that 80% of the country's oil reserves, estimated at more than six billion barrels, are in the South, but the region must Use atreviesa the pipeline north of the country for export. The two parties must quickly reach an understanding on the status of hundreds of thousands of southerners who still live in the North, as the northerners installed in the South to avoid accelerating the wave of migration has already started.

Add the demarcation of the North-South border, of which 20% is under discussion, and the issue of Abyei, a village situated on the border between North and South claimed by both the Ngok Dinka tribe and the Southerner Northerners of the Misseriya.

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