At 10:18 AM (EDT) on Thursday, July 14, the UN General Assembly met to vote on whether or not to admit the Republic of South Sudan as its 193rd member state. The Republic of South Sudan was admitted by a vote of acclamation and is now a member of the United Nations. Immediately following the General Assembly meeting, the flag of the Republic of South Sudan flew for the first time in front of the UN, ceremoniously marking its membership in the UN. Now that the Republic of South Sudan is a member of the United Nations, the new country is now a DXCC entity by way of Section II, 1(a) of the DXCC rules. The DXCC Desk will begin immediately accepting QSOs for this new entity, with a start date of July 14, 2011.

According to DXCC Manager Bill Moore, NC1L, the Honor Roll numbers move from 340 to 341 for the Top of the Honor Roll, and for Honor Roll it becomes 332. “The deadline for the Honor Roll and annual listings is December 31, so you must submit the new entity to DXCC by then in order to retain your Honor Roll status,” Moore explained. “For Logbook of The World (LoTW), you may submit all your QSOs with the Republic of South Sudan stations anytime. There is no need to hold them out of your log or do anything differently from what you already have been doing. You do not need to assign country names or identifiers. After we issue certificates to the Republic of South Sudan license holders, LoTW will make matches and assign the correct entities automatically.”

As of July 14, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has not announced a prefix block for the Republic of South Sudan.

For programmers and others who require use of the DXCC entity code, the code assigned to Republic of South Sudan is 521.