Experts Fear South Sudan May Return To Conflict

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, according to UN experts.

The experts pointed to political disputes between former rivals now leading the government, which is President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar that have gridlocked much of the peace deal they signed more than three and a half years ago.

The report said 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.

In the report to the UN 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.

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.

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.