Rift Valley Institute

This show is brought to you under the South Sudan National Archives Project, supported by Norway and implemented by UNESCO in partnership with RVI, and in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Museum and National Heritage (MCMNH). Overview Epidemics are connected to the history of border management in South Sudan. As the British colonial government was established over the 1930s, administrators saw the control of infectious disease as a key reason for the start of a pass system across Southern borders. Officials designated ‘areas’ within which people's movements in and out were controlled with passes. These were the first passports in Southern Sudan, to allow people to travel outside of ‘infected’ districts within Southern Sudan, and to cross the borders into Congo, Central Africa and Uganda. The passes were supposed to be issued by chiefs, and then stamped by clinics to show that the individual was free of infection. But this system was difficult to monitor and control—chiefs argued that people would