JUBA: Torn by civil war and facing a humanitarian crisis, South Sudan is finding hope on the sporting front: The world’s newest nation is in line for international recognition that would allow it to send a team to next year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Gaining Olympic status, some say, could help bolster national pride and unite warring tribal factions in the fractured northeastern African country, where about 50,000 people have been killed in fighting in the past year-and-a half.

South Sudan, which split from Sudan and became independent in 2011, will be considered for recognition at the International Olympic Committee executive board meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the end of the month.

It could be formally approved by the full IOC a few days later and become the 206th country — the latest after Kosovo — to gain Olympic recognition.

“We are part of the international world community,” said Tong Chor Malek, secretary general of South Sudan’s newly formed national Olympic committee. “Now, there are 205 national committees (in the IOC). Why not South Sudan?“

South Sudan’s search for sporting recognition was highlighted at the 2012 London Olympics when marathon runner Guor Marial competed as an independent athlete under the IOC flag because his country was not recognized by the Olympic body.

Marial, who finished 47th in the race, had refused to run for Sudan after fleeing previous violence there, escaping from a refugee camp as a boy to become an asylum seeker in the United States.

Now known as Guor Mading Maker, he could return to the Olympics in Rio as part of the first South Sudanese team, swapping the Olympic flag for the new, multicolored one of his homeland.