2005 — Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement

On January 9, 2005, Sudan's government and southern rebels signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Nairobi, Kenya. The signing ended Africa's longest civil war, after 21 years, some two million lives lost, and millions of people displaced from their homes across the south and beyond.

The deal did more than silence the guns. It opened a six-year interim period and guaranteed the south a referendum on independence, a promise written into the peace itself. In 2011, southern voters claimed that promise, and the referendum created South Sudan, the world's newest nation. A signature in Nairobi had carried within it the birth certificate of a country.