Southern Sudan's Independence Referendum Vote Passes 60 Percent Participation Validation Mark

YAMBIO, SUDAN - JANUARY 14: A Congolese woman and her child with malaria speak with a doctor at the Makpandu refugee camp January 14, 2011 outside of the town of Yambio, south Sudan. The camp, which houses nearly 4,000 people from both the Congo and the Central African Republic (CAR) who have fled violence from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) outside of Yambio, a poor and isolated town near the borders of CAR and the Congo. The area has had a history of conflict due to the presence of the shadowy paramilitary group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) which has terrorized much of the population along the border regions of the three countries. South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest regions, is participating in an independence referendum following a historic 2005 peace treaty that brought to an end decades of civil war between the Arab north and predominantly Christian and animist south. The south is expected to vote around 99 percent to secede from the north which will also give it a majority of Sudan’s oil. The result is expected to split Africa’s largest country in two. Over two million people were killed in the north-south civil war which began in the 1950`s. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)