Südsudan

South Sudan's president and opposition leader are expected to travel to the Vatican next week for what the Holy See says is a "spiritual retreat" and opposition officials say is an effort to help implement the country's peace deal.

The U.N. Security Council renewed a peacekeeping mission in South Sudan for an additional year; while Russia abstained from the vote accusing implicitly the U.S. of not backing the revitalized peace agreement and overburdening the draft resolution with language on human rights issues.

The truce in South Sudan is holding but could break down at any time. To stave off renewed civil war, external actors should urge the belligerents to strike new bargains on security and internal boundaries – and accept a third-party protection force for the capital.

Reports of atrocities in South Sudan despite last year's landmark deal to end the civil war.

September’s UN-backed South Sudan peace agreement is holding and has led to positive change, but tens of thousands of civilians in the war-weary nation are still reliant of life-saving humanitarian assistance, and time is running out. This was the message that David Shearer, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for South Sudan, relayed to the Security Council on Friday.

The leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea have travelled to South Sudan for high-level talks with President Salva Kiir amid efforts to revive a flagging peace deal struck last year between his government and rebels. The visit on Monday came amid increasing warnings that the deal agreed in September last year to quell South Sudan's war was falling apart and all sides were preparing for fresh fighting.

“Alarming” food insecurity threatens nearly seven million people in South Sudan, according to a new report by three United Nations agencies appealing for greater assistance and better access to humanitarian relief.

[…] in a 216-page report it will submit to the Human Rights Council next month, the commission [United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan] detailed continuing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and intensifying repression by the country’s security services.

Despite a peace agreement, mass atrocities continue in South Sudan, driven partly by fights over control of oil, and foreign oil companies may be complicit in war crimes, a United Nations panel said on Wednesday.