According to high-ranking officials speaking at a UNIFEM-sponsored Gender Justice Workshop for South Sudan, the government of Southern Sudan has provided policy instruments designed to protect women and girls and ensure that women's concerns are addressed. What remains to be done is translating these policy instruments into laws and implement them.

The vast majority of children and youth from the south have not received any formal schooling, and education indicators in Southern Sudan today are among the worst in the world. Formal education in the south was severely limited even before the most recent two decades of civil war.

Thousands of domestic poultry have been destroyed in and around the southern Sudanese capital of Juba in an attempt to contain an avian flu threat reported in the region several months ago, officials said. Samson Kwaje, the southern Sudan information minister, said a team had been visiting homes to check poultry and destroy suspected cases.

Can the story of happy return be consolidated into a new beginning or will the present optimism turn sour under the weight of unfulfilled promises? The south is a land for the large part without schools, hospitals, roads, jobs or a working government. Hopes of a new dawn, fuelled by a wealth of oil and gold, are tempered by fears that outbreaks of militia fighting could spill over into renewed conflict if frustration at the slow pace of change continues to fester.

An outbreak of cholera in the southern Sudanese city of Juba has claimed the lives of 59 people since the first case was reported there two weeks ago, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Tuesday. The ICRC said in a statement that it was airlifting 30 tonnes of emergency medical supplies from Kenya to Juba to treat those infected. More than a thousand cases of cholera have been reported in Juba, southern Sudan's capital, since 6 February, the agency said.