Southern Sudan: Results Show Nearly Unanimous Vote For Independence

Virtually every voter in Southern Sudan’s January 9th Independence referendum cast their ballot in favor of seceding from the North, according to results released by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission on Friday. The Commission’s most recent count was at 98.7 percent in favor of independence.

With the independence referendum accepted as most observers expected, the focus will not be on other issue that are harder to manage.

In the months and weeks leading up to to the vote, tens of thousands of Southern Sudanese who had been displaced by years of fighting returned South, often to areas along the border with the North. Southern Sudan remains one of the poorest regions in the world, and some aid groups have voiced concerned that a large influx of internally displaced people could put a strain of the new state’s already weak infrastructure. 

 The new state and the government of Sudan in Khartoum will still have to deal with a number of unresolved issues in the coming months, including oil revenue sharing, citizenship and the status of disputed areas like the Abyei border region, where violence broke out during the voting.