Due to the slow pace of reforms and the implementation of the revitalized 2018 Peace Agreement, South Sudan risks relapsing into a new
"large-scale conflict"
, warns a UN report released on Monday April 26th. , calling for a continuation of the arms embargo.
Given recent calls for the resignation of the country's leaders,
"action should be taken urgently to prevent a return to a large-scale conflict"
underlines this annual report by the UN experts in charge of the application of sanctions and of the arms embargo imposed on South Sudan since 2018.
To read also: South Sudan: "The soldiers slaughtered people like goats"
In their document recently submitted to the Security Council, the experts call for
"a new dynamic of regional and international partners (...) to remedy the insecurity and the growing political divides in South Sudan"
. They demand the maintenance of the arms embargo which expires on May 31 and new sanctions against those who oppose the application of the Peace Agreement and obstruct the delivery of humanitarian aid. Experts are also calling for an independent assessment of how the government is managing its arms stockpiles.
"Since February 2020, the slowness of the reforms introduced by the government and the selective application of the revitalized Agreement on the Settlement of the Conflict in South Sudan have hampered any strengthening of the protection of civilians and any prospect of long-term peace."
, they say.
The disagreements for more than a year
"have accentuated the existing political, military and ethnic divisions in the country, and led to multiple violence between the two main signatories of the Agreement, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement
(MPLS)
of President Salva Kiir Mayardit, and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement / Army in opposition
(M / APLS in opposition)
of First Vice-President Riek Machar Teny ”
, specify the experts.
Read also: The endless nightmare of South Sudan
Consequently,
"the South Sudanese have never been so numerous to need humanitarian assistance in 2021"
.
"While 8.5 million people have humanitarian needs, the government has set up bureaucratic obstacles to the delivery of humanitarian aid and the ongoing conflict has hampered its safe distribution,"
the report also denounces.
South Sudan was the scene for six years of a civil war that claimed some 380,000 lives and which officially ended with the creation in February 2020 of a government of national unity.