According to a recent report by the Oakland Institute, 'Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa: South Sudan', a large influx of one-sided foreign investment has flooded into South Sudan. These unfair land deals undermine the land rights of rural communities, increase food insecurity, further entrench poverty, and might result in skewed development patterns in South Sudan. One case studied by the report involves an Egyptian equity firm, Citadel Capital.

Lack of unity is South Sudan’s most profound crisis, one that underlies the country’s economic and political woes. It will take a long time and sustained efforts to build one nation with common values.

A renowned journalist was humiliated and beaten by security guards manning South Sudan’s National Assembly on Monday, eye witnesses told Sudan Tribune. Mading Ngor, host of the popular ’Wake Up Juba’ show on Bakhita FM, was roughed up by at least four security men and wrestled to the ground in front of other journalists. Only when a MP intervened was he let go by the security services.

There are about one million Ugandans living in South Sudan, according to the Kampala City Traders’ Association (KCTA). But life is not easy for the Ugandan traders who supply South Sudan with many essential goods. On a side road at the market, a Southern Sudanese policeman wearing orange fatigues strikes a passing Ugandan with his rubber whip a few times, seemingly without any provocation. The Ugandan winces and then continues on his way. Ugandan migrants say such incidents - and much worse - are not uncommon. They say they have been beaten, arrested without cause and faced a plethora of other forms of harassment by Southern Sudanese security forces.

Many Kenyans are heading to the new Republic of South Sudan as investors.

Sudan air force on Monday 23 January bombed Elfoj refugee camp in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state, leaving 14 civilians missing and injuring another, the UN said, raising the already high tensions between the two countries. 'The aerial bombing occurred just after 10am local time in Elfoj in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state,' the UN High Commissioner for refugees said in a statement.

The African Union High Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) committee of experts has tabled a proposal that could lead to a settlement for the thorny oil issue between Sudan and South Sudan. The proposal was submitted at the current round of talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on post independence issues between the two countries.

South Sudan has said it ordered the halt of oil production that provides some 98 per cent of its revenue, amid a deepening dispute with the Sudanese government over pipeline fees. Sudan admits to taking some South Sudanese oil destined for export as compensation until an agreement, but the South has said this is theft. 'The government has instructed the minister of petroleum and mining to proceed with arrangements for a complete shutdown of oil production,' Barnaba Marial Benjamin, South Sudan's minister of information, told the AFP news agency on Friday.

Around 47 people have been killed in tribal violence in South Sudan, the latest in a cycle of attacks that have displaced some 60,000 people in the new African nation, officials said. A youth armed group from the Murle tribe attacked Duk Padyet in Jonglei state late on Monday, mostly killing young children, women and old people from the Lou Nuer tribe, said Philip Thon Leek Deng, a local leader and member of parliament.

Minority Rights Group International (MRG) has condemned the recent attacks between the Lou Nuer and Murle communities in Pibor, Jonglei state, South Sudan, and called on the government to take immediate steps to protect civilians from all ethnic groups. 'In the long term, the government must also address the root causes of violence among minority communities through political representation, disarmament and equitable distribution of natural resources.'

The Republic of South Sudan (RoSS) is going through a major displacement crisis. The country is playing host to tens of thousands of refugees who fled fighting in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States. In addition to this, hundreds of thousands of people are displaced due to violence within South Sudan itself. The country also has to contend with a large influx of southerners returning from northern cities. This crisis could soon become overwhelming for the world’s newest country – a country already struggling to deliver security and basic services to its citizens.

As a USAID International Engagement Conference for South Sudan gets underway in Washington DC from 14-15 December, cautions against foreign land investments that are being promoted as a solution for development in the new nation.

Fresh fighting broke out in South Sudan on Sunday following a rebel assault on civilian and police bases in Pigi County in the troubled Jonglei state, officials said, four days after an earlier attack in Jale Payam in the same state. Militiamen loyal to rebel leader and former army renegade General George Athor Deng attacked Atar village from four directions, killing scores and wounding others, deputy governor Hussein Maar Nyuot said.

Civil society leaders in South Sudan are closely watching a legal battle unfolding in Sweden, as prosecutors investigate an oil company accused of involvement in massive human rights abuses here. James Ninrew vividly remembers the day Sudan’s military attacked his community, which had the misfortune of living above vast oil reserves consigned to a consortium led by the Swedish oil giant, Lundin Oil. 'They used helicopter gunships to bomb houses,' he said. Such accusations form part of the basis of a report that has recently prompted Sweden’s public prosecutor, Magnus Elving, to launch an investigation that could lead to a criminal case against Lundin Oil.

Thousands of civilians who fled conflict in the Sudanese state of South Kordofan across the border into the new country of South Sudan continue to face insecurity and a reduced humanitarian presence following a bombing raid, according to the refugees and aid workers. Some 23,000 ethnic Nuba are staying at a site in Yida, just a few kilometers from the border, which came under aerial bombardment on 10 November. The Sudanese armed forces were widely blamed, but denied responsibility.

The UN refugee agency has expressed concern about the security of thousands of refugees in South Sudan border areas as fighting in neighbouring Sudan continues to drive civilians across the frontier. 'UNHCR is working to move these refugees away from the border and to safer areas of South Sudan because of concerns about security,' the agency's chief spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, told journalists in Geneva.

At least eighteen people are dead and scores wounded in a fierce fighting between the army and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) in South Sudan Friday, the military has said. 'Heavily-armed' SAF forces attacked Kuek area in Upper Nile state along the borders with Sudan’s White Nile state, leading to death of five of his soldiers and 13 of the attackers, said The SPLA spokesman, Col. Philip Aguer Panyang. At least 26 were wounded on the side of the SPLA and 47on the SAF side, according to Aguer.

Two South Sudanese independent journalists have been imprisoned over a column critical of President Salva Kiir, according to local journalists and news reports. On 1 November South Sudan National Security Services (NSS) agents in the temporary capital of Juba arrested Peter Ngor, editor of the private daily Destiny, and ordered the indefinite suspension of his newspaper for running an 26 October opinion article by columnist Dengdit Ayok, news reports said. The article, titled 'Let Me Say So', criticised the president for allowing his daughter to marry an Ethiopian national and accused him of 'staining his patriotism', news reports said.

The Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) commissioned investigations on the 'land grab' in South Sudan which culminated into a 48-page dossier dubbed 'The New Frontier'. The dossier reveals that in the period 2007 to 2010 'foreign interests sought or acquired a total of 2.64 million hectares of land (6.52 million acres) in the agriculture, forestry and biofuel sectors alone'. According to the report’s author David Kuol Mading: 'That is a larger land area than the entire country of Rwanda,' said the report’s author, David Kuol Mading.

'The ink has barely dried on the documents formalising South Sudan’s self-determination, but the scramble for its land is already in full swing,' writes Nisrin Elamin.