July 9th 2018 (Nyamilepedia) – South Sudan, world’s youngest nation, today, 9th July 2018, marks 7 years since it obtained independence from the neighboring Sudan following a landslide win for South Sudan separatist in a referendum that was a executed as a part of a peace agreement signed in Naivasha, Kenya, known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
The peace agreement signed by then Southern Sudanese and SPLM/SPLA leader Dr. John Garang de’Mabior and the Sudanese president Omar Hassan Ahmed Al-Bashir ended the Africa’s longest civil war that killed more than two million people.
South Sudan’s government announced last week that it will cancel the independence celebrations due to economic and financial shortcomings that has engulfed the country since a civil, ongoing, broke out in December 2013 in the nation’s capital Juba between rival SPLM party members.
On January 9th 2011, more than 98 per cent of South Sudanese people went out and voted in favor of separation, a move that contradicted the initial SPLM vision of the New Sudan Project as laid down by Dr. John Garang de’Mabior in 1983.
As the country marks its seven year of self-rule, it has also some challenges that the leaders has not addressed. There is currently a civil war that broke out in December 2013 after forces loyal to the South Sudan’s incumbent president Salva Kiir and his then Northern Bhar Al-Ghazal governor Paul Malong Awan, went door to door killing Nuer civilians in the capital sparking a nation-wide protest from top army generals leading to a civil war.
Currently, there is peace talks under way by the IGAD and the citizens seems to have lost hope in their leaders because a previous peace agreement collapsed after clashes between guards loyal to Kiir and Machar broke out in the country’s presidential palace.
The economy has collapsed and the only hope for its revival is the ongoing peace process.
