South Sudan won its independence in 2011. Fifteen years later, the country continues to face profound institutional, economic, social, and environmental challenges, for which Salva Kiir and Riek Machar—the two most influential political figures in the history of this young nation—bear direct or indirect responsibility.

By Omer Freixa

Africa’s borders were imposed from the outside by the European powers during the brief Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. Although those colonial boundaries were largely preserved following the wave of independence in the 1960s, northeastern Africa experienced two major territorial changes: Eritrea’s independence in 1993 and, 15 years ago, the birth of South Sudan.

On July 9, 2011, South Sudan emerged following a referendum that fulfilled the terms of the peace agreement ending Sudan’s long second civil war, which had begun in 1983 and formally concluded in January 2005. The world’s youngest nation was born after an overwhelming majority voted in favor of independence. With the secession, Sudan lost its status as Africa’s largest country to Algeria. More importantly, however, it lost its richest oil fields, which lay within the new nation’s borders. What should have been a joyful birth quickly became a traumatic experience from which the country has yet to recover.

It is an oversimplification to portray the historic conflict as merely a religious war between a Muslim north and a Christian and traditionally religious south. In reality, the Arab-Islamic elite in Khartoum systematically marginalized the country’s peripheral regions, particularly under the dictatorship of Omar Hassan al-Bashir (1989–2019). One tragic example of that exclusion was the genocide in Darfur, which began in 2003. Often overlooked as the first genocide of the twenty-first century, it claimed more than 400,000 lives—most of them members of non-Arab ethnic groups—and triggered a refugee crisis that spread southward.

A Chronic Civil War

Like its northern neighbor, South Sudan has been marked by persistent conflict. Since gaining independence, it has never enjoyed lasting peace or held national elections. Sudan itself has spent roughly 60 percent of its history as an independent nation—since 1956—embroiled in civil war, most recently since April 2023. Following a similar path, South Sudan has already spent at least one-third of its brief existence in civil conflict.

The end of Sudan’s second civil war initially raised hopes among the people of the south, who were granted semi-autonomous status. Those hopes only grew after the decisive “yes” vote in the independence referendum. Yet the optimism evaporated in December 2013, when South Sudan’s first civil war erupted.

In truth, the roots of the conflict stretched back to 1956, when Sudan gained independence under colonial borders that ignored longstanding regional realities. From that point forward, most people living in what would become South Sudan sought greater autonomy, making uneven progress depending on the government in Khartoum.

When South Sudan became independent in 2011, its new government rested on a fragile alliance of leaders united primarily by their shared past in the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), founded in 1983. After the movement’s historic leader, John Garang, was killed in a helicopter crash in 2005, Salva Kiir assumed leadership of the semi-autonomous region. In April 2010 he won a decisive election, becoming president of Southern Sudan, and the following year became president of the newly independent nation.

Garang’s death effectively ended any remaining prospect of preserving unity with Khartoum, since his successor strongly favored secession. Once in office, Kiir faced accusations of corruption and of consolidating the dominance of the Dinka ethnic group, to which he belongs. Tensions reached a breaking point in July 2013, when he dismissed Vice President Riek Machar—a member of the Nuer ethnic group—along with several cabinet ministers. After being accused of attempting a coup that December, Machar established the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-in Opposition (SPLA-IO), and any realistic hope of reconciliation between the two leaders disappeared.

Despite the appearance of an ethnic and personal rivalry, the underlying struggle between the two political elites has always centered on control of the state’s economic resources and oil revenues. Ethnic divisions have largely served as a political tool, used to mobilize supporters and weaken opponents.

A Precarious Balance

International mediation efforts have met with only limited success in restoring a functioning government of national unity. An initial agreement was reached in 2015, but within months renewed fighting caused it to collapse, and Machar was once again removed from the vice presidency.

A new peace agreement, signed in 2018, temporarily halted the most intense phase of the conflict, by which time an estimated 400,000 people had died and half the country’s population had been displaced. Although Machar was reinstated as vice president in 2020, the agreement left many critical issues unresolved. The ceasefire remained fragile, marred by repeated violations, and no consensus was reached on adopting a permanent constitution that would allow national elections to take place. Those elections have now been postponed twice.

The 2018 peace agreement also failed to resolve South Sudan’s humanitarian crisis or its deep-rooted socioeconomic problems. The country remains one of the poorest nations in the world. According to World Bank data for 2022, 80 percent of the population lives in poverty. Despite intervention by foreign governments, the African Union, the regional bloc IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development), and the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the country continues to endure a chronic humanitarian crisis.

In 2019, some seven million people—about 70 percent of the population—struggled to obtain enough food. Conditions worsened as chronic violence continued to plague the country. Conflict escalated again in late 2025 after Machar was dismissed from office for the third time, accused of treason and terrorism in what many observers viewed as the virtual resumption of the civil war.

Other Factors

Political instability has been compounded by climate-related and public health challenges. Climate change has intensified conflicts between nomadic herders and settled farmers over access to basic resources—a pattern also found in Sudan and throughout much of the Sahel. South Sudan has experienced alternating cycles of drought and flooding, while an outbreak of desert locusts that spread from the Horn of Africa in early 2020 further deepened food insecurity.

Together, these crises—combined with recurring violence and the recent, though undeclared, return to civil war—have plunged South Sudan into a worsening public health emergency. The destruction of essential medical infrastructure and the endemic presence of cholera have compounded the country’s difficulties. At the end of 2024, a cholera outbreak resulted in more than 100,000 cases and claimed at least 1,600 lives. An earlier outbreak, recorded between 2016 and 2017 during the South Sudan conflict, caused 436 deaths, according to official figures.

Relations with Khartoum also remain strained because of unresolved border disputes, including competing claims over the oil-rich Abyei region and the Heglig oil field. In addition, the civil war that has devastated Sudan since 2023 has affected South Sudan on two fronts.

The first is economic. As a landlocked country, South Sudan depends on pipelines running through Sudan to export its crude oil. The war has damaged critical infrastructure, choking off the country’s principal source of revenue.

The second is humanitarian. More than one million people have fled across the border into South Sudan to escape the conflict in the north, overwhelming an already fragile relief effort. By mid-2025, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 95 percent of the more than 500,000 refugees in South Sudan were Sudanese.

Abyei remains a territory under special administrative arrangements established at the end of Sudan’s second civil war. The international community mistakenly assumed that the peace agreement would also settle that dispute. Yet in 2011, the people of Abyei were not even allowed to participate in the referendum that determined whether the territory would become part of Sudan or South Sudan. As a result, the conflict remains unresolved.

The continuing war in Sudan—now regarded as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis—could easily spill over into South Sudan, further destabilizing an already fragile status quo through the movement of weapons and armed groups across the border.

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Who Are Kiir and Machar?

By Gonzalo Vitón

Salva Kiir

Born in 1951, Salva Kiir has served as president of South Sudan since the country’s independence in 2011. Even before secession, he was president of the Autonomous Government of Southern Sudan, a position he assumed following the death of John Garang in a helicopter crash.

In 1969, Kiir joined the Anyanya guerrilla movement. After the Addis Ababa Agreement was signed in 1972, he became a member of the Sudanese Armed Forces. In 1983, he joined the newly established Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), led by John Garang, and remained one of Garang’s closest associates throughout the civil war.

Following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, Kiir assumed leadership of both the SPLM and the autonomous government. He has led the country ever since, although his presidency has been marked by civil war, allegations of corruption, and economic decline.

Riek Machar

Born in 1952, Riek Machar is vice president of South Sudan and Salva Kiir’s principal political rival. A member of the Nuer ethnic group, he has played a prominent role in the South Sudanese independence movement for decades.

During the civil war, Machar led several breakaway factions of the SPLM/A and entered into temporary agreements with the government in Khartoum before eventually rejoining the movement under John Garang’s leadership. Following South Sudan’s independence, he was appointed vice president, but Kiir dismissed him in 2013, a move that precipitated the outbreak of civil war.

Since then, Machar’s political career has alternated between periods of armed conflict, peace negotiations, and participation in governments of national unity. He remains the leading figure in South Sudan’s political opposition.