The UN envoy for South Sudan on Tuesday warned the Security Council not to take its eyes off the world’s newest nation, saying the conflict in neighboring Sudan shows “how quickly hard-won peace gains can unravel.”
Nicholas Haysom, head of the UN Mission in South Sudan, said the impact of the conflict is “unfurling along multiple fronts,” with more than 117,000 women, children and men fleeing into South Sudan, where violent clashes also persist.
Meanwhile, the government is struggling to implement the most challenging provisions of a fragile 2018 power-sharing agreement and move toward the country’s first elections as an independent nation, Haysom said.
Photo: Reuters
He said the capacity of the government and humanitarian organizations to absorb the newcomers — 93 percent of them South Sudanese returning to the country — “is under strain,” with limited local resources and bottlenecks in border towns, especially Renk.
The conflict, which broke out in mid-April capping months of increasing tensions between the leaders of Sudan’s military and powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, has also affected the economy in already fragile South Sudan, Haysom said.
The sudden interruption of imports from Sudan has put essential commodities “out of reach” for ordinary people in South Sudan, and if oil exports from South Sudan through Sudan’s main seaport, Port Sudan, are interrupted as recently threatened, the effect on the country’s oil-dependent economy could be “devastating,” he said.
There were high hopes when South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long conflict, but the country slid into a civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions when forces loyal to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir battled those loyal to South Sudanese First Vice President Riek Machar.
The war, which left nearly 400,000 people dead and more than 4 million displaced, ended with a 2018 peace agreement, bringing Kiir and Machar together in a government of national unity. Under the agreement, elections were supposed to be held in February this year, but in August last year they were postponed until December next year.
While large-scale clashes have subsided, violence in parts of South Sudan persists, killing 2,240 people last year, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project said.
Earlier this month at least 20 people were killed and more than 50 wounded during intercommunal clashes in a UN protection camp in the north of the country.
Implementation of the peace agreement has been sluggish. A permanent constitution still has not been drafted. A census has not been conducted. Security arrangements, considered the backbone of the agreement, are only partially complete.
About 83,000 soldiers from opposition and government forces are meant to unite in a national army, but so far 55,000 have graduated and are yet to be deployed. Others languish in training centers with poor conditions and little food.
Haysom said that on the political front, the Sudan conflict “reduces the much-needed bandwidth [domestic and international] to focus attention on South Sudan during this critical phase of its transition.”
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