South Sudan > Country Background and Current Challenges
Since Sudan’s independence in 1956, the country has experienced two long and devastating civil wars (1955-1972, 1983-2005). When the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on 9 January 2005, they ended Africa’s longest running civil war in which an estimated two million people died, whether through conflict, famine, or disease.
On 9 July 2011, South Sudan officially became its own country, independent from Sudan’s northern states.
South Sudan enters nationhood facing a number of daunting challenges. The world’s newest nation is also one of its poorest. South Sudan needs support as it works to strengthen its almost non-existent essential services, including health care, nutrition, maternal and child health, education, infrastructure, and access to water and sanitation. Literacy levels are very low while malnutrition rates are very high.
Ongoing conflict in some areas has led to tens of thousands of people being displaced from their homes, magnifying the level of need in the country.
Furthermore, in 2011, hundreds of thousands of people returned to South Sudan from Sudan’s northern states where they had been living since the time of the civil war. However, these people returned home to a new country lacking even basic infrastructure.
