Trappings of state
Getting a brand new country off the ground is a fiddly business
SOUTH SUDAN chose its new national anthem in democratic style. In a packed concert hall in Juba, the young state’s scruffy capital, rival choirs performed their entries. Purists argued that the winner’s tune did not fit its lyrics. But the decision has laid down one stone on the road to statehood. Less fun lies ahead. Hooking up with the international system’s buried wiring involves gaining everything from telephone dialling codes to internet suffixes, via postal connections, air-traffic control and trade tariffs.
A foreign service is already taking shape. Around 100 southerners worked as Sudanese diplomats; diaspora members already man outposts in many countries. More staff are needed. Outsiders are hurrying to help. Independent Diplomat, a charity, is advising the new state. Austria is offering five places at the world’s oldest diplomatic school in Vienna.
Their first task is formal but vital: to gain diplomatic recognition. Notching up all 190-odd countries will take time—Estonia, which regained independence in 1991, has relations with only 170, most recently formalising ties with Haiti in 2010. But recognition from the world’s main governments (and the likely lack of any opposing voices) enables a vital step: membership of the United Nations.
South Sudan will tread a path already navigated in recent years by East Timor, Eritrea, Slovakia, and the ex-Yugoslav and ex-Soviet republics that had big-country blessings on their birth. The process is hardly glamorous: new countries do not get an embossed birth certificate or a fanfare. Instead, the Editorial, Terminology and Reference Service of the United Nations Documentation Division will enter the state in “Country Names”—a pamphlet that lists in six languages the popular and formal names of full UN member nations. Outsiders such as Abkhazia, Kosovo, Northern Cyprus and Western Sahara have to make do with a place on lesser lists, such as those compiled for less political purposes by the UN Statistics Division.
The listing in New York sets many wheels turning. It grants a spot in ISO 3166-1, a directory compiled by the Geneva-based International Standards Organisation. This list converts national names into two- and three-letter codes (AFG for Afghanistan; ZWE for Zimbabwe). These codes will help sort the new state’s international post, mark out its citizens in immigration databases and allow the South Sudan pound to feature on international exchanges when it launches in July. The national top-level domains used in web addresses (like “.fr” for France and “.de” for Germany) are usually the same as the ISO two-letter codes. South Sudan’s web sites may have the sinister if logical “.ss” suffix.
International telephone codes are allocated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN agency also based in Geneva. It will grant the South Sudanese a dialling code, replacing Sudan’s +249. (Eritrea, until now Africa’s newest country, is +291, so +292 could be for South Sudan.) The ITU also divvies up radio wavelengths. A South Sudanese space-satellite programme may still be some way off, but the new country will have a place in the weighty Master International Frequency Register.
Before South Sudan’s new diplomats relax on the cocktail circuit, they will also need to establish ties with a long list of other outfits. The International Civil Aviation Organisation deals not just with air travel, but will also help the new government issue machine-readable passports. The Universal Postal Union will allow the country’s new postage stamps (eagerly awaited by philatelists) to convey letters abroad.
That is a big hurdle for would-be countries outside the fold: Somaliland’s mail often comes via Ethiopia; Palestine’s post until recently had to go through Israel; until 2008 post between Taiwan and mainland China went via Hong Kong or Macau. South Sudan has no coastline, but it may well join the International Maritime Organisation, much preoccupied these days with piracy in nearby waters. Around half the world’s landlocked states belong to the body.
Textbooks, encyclopedias and wall maps may take time to catch up with the new country. Some cash-strapped libraries still use atlases showing fossils such as the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic. But after decades of struggling for independence, South Sudan is not short of patience.
Source: The Econimist
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