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A Brief Description of South Sudan Sudan gained its independence from England in 1956. Since then, it has been devastated by two civil wars. In July 1983, the second civil war erupted in Sudan. Two million people died in South Sudan as a result of that war, as well as the famine and disease that followed. An additional four million people were displaced. The Southern Sudanese people have suffered from decades of violence, injustice, terror, and poverty under the Government of Sudan (GoS) and a terrorist group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The GoS and LRA attacked and burned entire villages. They abducted children from their homes in the middle of the night, forcing some to kill their own siblings and parents—and paralyzed an entire country with fear. Countless innocent civilians were tortured, raped, disfigured, mutilated, and murdered based on their Christian or animist beliefs, as well as the color of their skin. Across the border in Northern Uganda, innocent and

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