New countries don’t pop up every day. And even if a territorial entity does declare itself to be an independent country, it is not always recognized as such by the rest of the world. The newest internationally recognized country in the world is the African country of South Sudan, which declared independence on July 9, 2011. In the following days, it became also the newest member of the United Nations.
So, how do new countries come into being? Although there are no official rules per se, there are generally accepted criteria rooted in international law. The Montevideo Convention of 1933 defined a state as a sovereign unit that could meet four benchmarks: having a permanent population, having defined territorial boundaries, having a government, and having an ability to enter into agreements with other states. Furthermore, the concept of self-determination—the process by which a group of people form their own state and choose their own government—was explored in documents and declarations of the United Nations, beginning with its 1945 charter. Still, even when the aforementioned criteria appear to be met, internationally recognized independence is not a foregone conclusion. What often serves as a roadblock is resistance from the country from which an entity wants to secede and the inability to gain widespread formal recognition from the other countries of the world. (Case in point: see Kosovo.)
South Sudan was originally the southern part of Sudan, which itself had become independent in 1956 after being ruled by Egypt and Great Britain. The population of Sudan was quite diverse, with a striking difference between the populations of the northern and southern parts of Sudan: the north was dominated by adherents of Islam, most of whom spoke Arabic and identified as Arab, while the people of the south tended to be of African ethnic groups, adherents of Christianity or traditional African religions, and speakers of various indigenous African languages who came to use English as the primary language of education. The pre- and post-independence administrations, which were based in the north, had trouble gaining acceptance by all of the diverse political constituencies in Sudan, particularly those in the south, leading to the marginalization of the population there. As Sudan’s anticipated independence drew near, southern Sudan’s population, which had received very little representation in the new administration formed in 1954, feared that it would be further dominated by the northern-based government. The increasing tensions contributed to an armed resistance and two lengthy civil wars that took place in 1955–72 and 1983–2005. The internationally supported 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, crafted to end the long-running conflict between the north and the south, granted southern Sudan semiautonomous status and provided for a referendum on independence to be held in six years. The referendum took place in January 2011, with about 99 percent of the voters choosing to secede, and South Sudan, with the support of the international community, declared independence later that year.