UNITED NATIONS
Many political leaders and
civilians in South Sudan are “deeply skeptical” a 2018 peace agreement can
deliver stability to the world’s newest nation and worry it may be heading back
into conflict, U.N. experts said in a report circulated Monday.Courtesy
The experts pointed to
political disputes between former rivals now leading the government --
President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar -- that have gridlocked
much of the peace deal they signed more than 3 1/2 years ago.
“Almost every component of the
peace agreement is now hostage to the political calculations of the country’s
military and security elites, who use a combination of violence,
misappropriated public resources and patronage to pursue their own narrow
interests,” the report said. “Far from delivering transformational change to
the predatory political system of South Sudan, the peace agreement has itself
become a lucrative venue for elite power politics.”
In the report to the U.N.
Security Council, the panel of experts monitoring sanctions on South Sudan said
warnings about the agreement’s prospects from civilians and many political,
military and civil society leaders have grown more urgent as the unity of key
opposition signatories “has frayed” and outside deals have proliferated.
There were high hopes when oil-rich South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long conflict. But the country slid into civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions when forces loyal to Kiir battled those loyal to Machar.
Tens of thousands of people
were killed in the war, which ended with the 2018 peace agreement that brought
Kiir and Machar together in a government of national unity. But challenges
remained, including the government’s failure to implement promised reforms.
The panel of experts pointed
to some progress in implementing the peace deal, including reconstituting the
Traansitional National Legislature last September and the Public Financial
Management Oversight Committee bringing some transparency to South Sudan’s
“opaque public finances.”
After the 77-page report was
drafted in March, Kiir and Machar signed an agreement on April 3 to unify the
command of the security forces, a key element of the peace agreement that eased
political tensions. Clashes between government troops and forces loyal to
Machar in the days preceding the signing had raised the threat of another
outbreak of serious fighting.
The panel of experts,
nonetheless, was sharply critical of “the zero-sum political calculus at the
heart of the national political process.”
They pointed to government
officials successfully getting at least a dozen opposition senior commanders to
defect, clashes between loyalists and defectors including over access to bases,
weapons and lucrative assets such as checkpoints and river ports, and deadly
violence outside the capital, Juba, fueled by regional and local rivalries and
animosities.
Tens of thousands of civilians
have been displaced and serious human rights abuses including sexual and
gender-based violence have “become a tragic hallmark of the conflict in South
Sudan,” the report said.
“There is little optimism left in South Sudan,” the experts added. “Panel interviews revealed a prevailing mood of frustration, mistrust and disillusionment with a political process held hostage to elite interests while increasingly detached from the lives of ordinary people.”
The panel said achievements in
implementing the peace agreement “remained largely procedural and
bureaucratic,” while the fragmenting opposition, cease-fire violations and
widespread violence in the regions undermined its key tenets.
“Many civilians and political
leaders with whom the panel spoke expressed a concern that the country may be
heading back towards conflict,” the report said, citing interviews with
confidential sources and civil society leaders in March.
The panel said conditions for
millions of civilians “are getting worse,” saying violence, floods and
displacement have created “unprecedented levels of food insecurity across much
of the country.” It cited the U.N. World Food Program’s warning in March that
South Sudan was facing its “worst hunger crisis ever,” with some 8.3 million people
needing food and 1.4 million children “acutely malnourished” as of December.
The experts said the
government’s purchase of approximately 25 new armored personnel carriers for
the police, shown in a March photograph, was a violation of the U.N. arms embargo.
The arms embargo expires May
31 and the panel recommended that the Security Council extend it because of
“persistent cease-fire violations” and intensifying violence in the regions.
The council is expected to vote May 26. - AP
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