The US is proposing the creation of a UN sanctions committee for the South Sudan crisis and says an arms embargo is possible if the warring sides cannot stick to a peace deal.
A draft resolution circulated among UN Security Council members on Tuesday does not explicitly name South Sudanese President Salva Kiir or rebel leader Riek Machar as possible targets for sanctions that would include an asset freeze and travel ban, but it says people affected could include “leaders of any entity.”
The resolution itself would not impose sanctions, but would set up the mechanism for doing so.
The US has threatened further action on the South Sudan conflict for months, beyond its own bilateral sanctions on the country.
Multiple ceasefires in South Sudan have failed, and tens of thousands have died in more than a year of fighting that has had ethnic overtones.
UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic told the council on Tuesday that “both sides seem to be rearming and preparing for a new military campaign.”
“Certainly, we would support an arms embargo,” British UN Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters earlier in the day.
He said several diplomats at the council’s monthly lunch on Monday with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wanted “a stronger stance by the Security Council toward the leaders who are being so disregarding of the suffering of the people of South Sudan.”
The other permanent members of the council — Russia, France and China — did not immediately comment on the US draft.
South Sudanese UN Ambassador Francis Deng on Tuesday told the council that it would be “double jeopardy to punish a country that’s already suffering.”
The demand for an arms embargo in particular has been rising. Early last month, 29 groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, sent an open letter to US President Barack Obama saying the US should circulate a draft resolution in the Security Council imposing an arms embargo.
A report by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey in April last year found that South Sudan is “saturated with weapons” after the civil war that ended in its independence from Sudan in 2011.
Even the country’s tribes have called for sanctions.
Simonovic said representatives of all 65 of South Sudan’s tribes met last week and asked the international community to impose sanctions not on the country, but on the groups and individuals who would not respect peace.
South Sudan’s warring sides face a deadline of Thursday next week to reach a decisive peace agreement. Peace talks resumed on Monday in Ethiopia, even as violations of a Feb. 1 truce were being reported.
UN Under-Secretary for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous told the Security Council that neither side in the talks appears to be taking them seriously.
The US draft resolution says the council would review South Sudan’s situation after next week’s deadline, and again after the proposed start of a “pre-transition period” on April 1 and might impose “any sanctions that may then be appropriate to respond to the situation.”
Human Rights Watch UN director Philippe Bolopion told reporters that the draft resolution was “long overdue, but a very positive step,” noting that his group has been calling for an arms embargo for more than a year.
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