SOUTH SUDAN

• Official name: Republic of South Sudan
• Location: Central Africa
• International organisations: None
• Borders: Central African Republic, Congo (Democratic Republic), Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda
• Coastline: None
• Land area: 619,000 Km2 (frontiers not yet finalised)
• Population: estimates range from 8 to 13 million
• Annual GDP (PPP) per capita: Unknown
• Ethnicity: Almost the entire population is of black African (or Bantu) stock, the main ethnic groups being the Azande, Dinka, Nuer and Shilluk.
• Languages: English is the official language and is the language of government and business. Arabic is widely used. Over 200 African languages are spoken, Dinka being the most widely used.
• Religion: The majority of the population follow traditional African religions. A substantial but unknown proportion are Protestant Christians. Some Christian groups claim that the majority of the population are Christians, but this is disputed.
• Form of government: Presidential democratic republic.
• Capital: Juba
• Constitution: The Constitution of South Sudan came into effect on 9 July 2011.
• Head of state: The President, elected by direct universal suffrage for a five-year term.
• Head of government: The President, who appoints the Cabinet.
• Legislature: South Sudan has a unicameral legislature, the South Sudan Legislative Assembly, which has 170 members.
• Electoral authority: None known
• Freedom House 2011 rating: no rating
• Transparency International Corruption Index: no rating
• Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom 2010 Index: no rating
• Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom 2010 Index: no rating

Political history

South Sudan is a borderland between the Arab-Islamic Nile Valley to the north and animist and Christian black Africa to the south. From the 16th century, like the rest of Sudan, it was notionally part of the Ottoman Empire, but the Ottomans never directly ruled it. The area became part of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1889, and thus came under British rule. The British created a separate administration in the south, which encouraged South Sudanese separatism, and also fostered the spread of Christianity, but in 1954, without having a say in the matter, South Sudan became part of the independent state of Sudan, ruled by the Arab-Muslim majority.

Southern resistance to northern rule soon led to civil war, which flared up intermittently for the next 40 years. In 1972 the World Council of Churches brokered the Addis Ababa Agreement, which gave the south regional autonomy and ended the fighting, but the Sudanese regime's attempt to impose Sharia law on the whole country led the South Sudanese Liberation Army to resume the civil war in 1983. There was another ceasefire in 1995, by which time 2 million people had died from violence and disease.

General Omar al-Bashir's military regime, which took power in 1989, initially continued the attempt to crush the southern independence movement, but by 2003, fighting a simultaneous civil war in Darfur and faced with international isolation, the regime surprisingly decided to abandon the struggle. In 2005 Sudan and the South Sudan leader John Garang signed the Nairobi Peace Agreement, which granted South Sudan autonomy, with the promise of a referendum on independence after five years. The referendum took place in January 2011 and saw an almost unanimous vote for independence. South Sudan became independent on 9 July.

South Sudan consists of the three Sudanese provinces of Bahr-al-Ghazal, Equatoria and Upper Nile. The Abyei region will decide in a referendum whether it wishes to join South Sudan. There is also agitation in Blue Nile and South Kordofan provinces to join South Sudan, but the Sudanese government has given no commitment on allowing this.

Garang was killed in a helicopter crash in July 2005, and was succeeded as South Sudan leader by Salva Kiir Mayardit, who was elected President in one-sided but reasonably free elections in April 2010. There is no organised opposition to Kiir's Sudan People's Liberation Movement.

Updated November 2011