We Need To Talk About, South Sudan

I'm prompted to think about South Sudan by the announcement this week that Ireland, Norway and Spain plan to formally recognize a State of Palestine by the end of this month. Why South Sudan, you may ask? Because in July 2011 South Sudan was the last time the international community welcomed a brand spanking new country with open arms. Let's see how well that worked out.

But first, a bit of history on the State of Palestine. The State of Palestine declared Independence in 1988. The declaration was made by the legislative council of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat presiding) while in exile in Tunisia. The declaration specified no particular borders for this new State, although it talks about comprising 'Palestinian territory'. In the intervening decades, the State of Palestine has been recognized by at least 143 countries.

How does a new country come into existence? There are no 'official' rules, although there are some generally accepted criteria rooted in international law. The Montevideo Convention (1933) defined a State as a sovereign unit that is able to meet four benchmarks: 1. A permanent population 2. Defined territorial boundaries 3. A government and 4. An ability to enter into agreements with other states. Let's call these the 'necessary' criteria, but they are not always 'sufficient' for statehood and international recognition. Sometimes new countries, even if they can achieve the basic criteria in theory, in practice  do not possess stability in these areas ie. borders, population movements, security, government etc. and international recognition may not be forthcoming. It's part of the reason a unilateral declaration of independence typically won't succeed without unanimous (or close to unanimous) international consensus and support. The birth of a new country is a bit of chicken and egg; you need to demonstrate some modicum of stability to be recognized internationally, and international recognition, sometimes but not always, brings some level of stability. 

So let's take a look at the case for the State of Palestine and how it's been progressing in terms of the four basic benchmarks. One benchmark is conspicuously absent, defined territorial boundaries, another, a government, is highly questionable, and a third, a permanent population, has been a major issue. During the Oslo negotiations, when the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established as the defacto government in the Palestinian controlled territories, they came very close to settling boundaries, but ultimately walked away from the maps. Not even during the 2000 Camp David Summit, when Israel offered eventually 92% of the West Bank (and all of Gaza) with land swaps making up the balance, were the Palestinians able to come to a final agreement on borders. Another sticking point, the main one by most accounts, has been Palestinian insistence on a 'Right of Return' which would jeopardize Israel's Jewish demographic integrity. According to negotiator Dennis Ross, the reason for the failure of the 'last best hope' was Arafat's unwillingness to sign a final deal that would close the door on any of the Palestinians' maximum demands, particularly the right of return. In his memoir, Ross claims that what Arafat really wanted was "... a one-state solution. Not independent, adjacent Israeli and Palestinian states, but a single Arab state encompassing all of historic Palestine." That demand has actually escalated with the split between the PA and Hamas - From the River to The Sea, as you might say, in the current lingo of campus protest. In the last two decades, the civil war between the secularist Fatah in the West Bank, and the religiously-driven Hamas in Gaza, has split the movement for an independent Palestine and completely upended the Palestinian governance benchmark. Hamas has recently taken the lead with their militant jihadism which views an independent Palestine as part of a Middle-Eastern Islamic caliphate. In sum, as the emerging countries benchmarks go, it's mostly all up in the air with the State of Palestine.     

And that is why we have to talk about South Sudan. It apparently met the benchmarks in 2011. By 2013, a little over two years after it seceded from Sudan and formally became a member of the international community, South Sudan erupted into a multi-sided ethnic civil war that lasts to this day. It is estimated that more than 400,000 people have been killed, almost 11% of which are children. The war displaced over 4.5 million people, approximately 2 million internally, and 2.5 million to neighboring countries, especially Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda. It is considered to be the third-largest refugee population in the world after Syria and Afghanistan, mostly women and children. According to Human Rights Watch in 2023, "The humanitarian situation worsened, driven by the cumulative and compounding effects of years of conflict, intercommunal violence, food insecurity, the climate crisis, and displacement... An estimated 9.4 million people in South Sudan, including 4.9 million children and over 300,000 refugees, mostly driven south from the Sudan conflict, needed humanitarian assistance."

The history of all emerging countries is different, and I'm not saying the story of South Sudan presages what we might expect if the State of Palestine were ever to succeed. But actually, I think the real lesson to draw here is how exceptional, one might even say miraculous, the founding of the State of Israel is.