South Sudan - おめでとうございます

South Sudan officially celebrated its independence from Sudan yesterday. South Sudanese could be found celebrating even in the streets of Nairobi. Personally I am thrilled fro the South Sudanese, but worry about how successful they will be at building a new nation from scratch. For the time being they are motivated by the natural high of newly realized, national liberation, but a couple years down the road when they are still struggling to build up their infrastructure, will they remain as committed as they are now to peaceful means of nation building? The humanitarian in me worries about the immediate safety of the South Sudanese as a whole. I am told that Khartoum (capital of Sudan) recently passed legislation that effectively stripped South Sudanese of their Sudanese citizenship. With South Sudan in the fledgling stages of building a government responsible to a people who fought so hard for its sovereignty, I am pessimistic that national IDs, passports and other forms of citizenship documentation will be made readily available in the foreseeable future. Without such proof of national belonging, South Sudanese join the ranks of Palestinians and Rohingya - denied the basic right of availing oneself the protection of the government from whom one claims citizenship/nationality.