NEW YORK, USA
A United Nations report warned Monday that the slow implementation of a revitalised peace accord in South Sudan is putting the country at risk of relapse into a "large-scale conflict."
In light of recent
calls for the country's leaders to step down, UN experts in charge of
overseeing sanctions and an arms embargo said that "urgent engagement is
needed to avert a return to large-scale conflict."
In the document,
which was recently submitted to the Security Council, the experts called for
"renewed momentum from regional and international partners to de-escalate
the growing security and political fractures in South Sudan."
The experts also
called for the arms embargo, which is set to expire at the end of May, to be
kept in place and for new sanctions against those hindering implementation of
the revived 2018 peace Agreement and obstructing the delivery of humanitarian
aid.
The experts also
called for an independent assessment of how the government is managing its arms
stockpiles.
"Since February
2020, the slow pace of reforms by the Government of South Sudan and its
selective implementation of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the
Conflict in South Sudan has hindered improvements in the protection of
civilians and prospects for long-term peace," the report said.
More than a year of
political disputes over how to implement the renewed peace accord "has
widened existing political, military and ethnic divisions in the country,"
the experts said.
Those disputes had
triggered "multiple incidents of violence between the two main
signatories," the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), led by
President Salva Kiir and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-Army in
Opposition, led by Vice-President Riek Machar.
As a result, the
people of South Sudan "are in need of humanitarian assistance in 2021 than
ever before," the report said.
"Despite the
humanitarian needs of 8.5 million people, the Government has imposed
bureaucratic barriers to the delivery of humanitarian aid, and ongoing conflict
has prevented its safe delivery," it added.
South Sudan suffered
six years of bloodshed that cost nearly 400,000 lives and drove four million
people from their homes before the conflict officially ended with the creation
of a power-sharing national unity government in February 2020. - AFP
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