South Sudan

The United Nations warns a record 7.74 million people, or two-thirds of South Sudan’s population, are likely to face hunger during this year’s lean season between May and July. … The key drivers of food insecurity and extreme hunger in South Sudan include climate shocks.

In what has been hailed as a major breakthrough, South Sudan's rival leaders sealed an agreement Sunday on a key military provision of their stuttering peace deal. President Salva Kiir and his rival, Vice President Riek Machar, agreed on the creation of a unified armed forces command, one of several crucial unresolved issues holding up implementation of the 2018 deal to end the country's bloody five-year civil war.

[…] The Sudan People's Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) -- led by Vice President Riek Machar -- had pulled out of the peace monitoring mechanism to protest continued "unprovoked" attacks of its bases by its "peace partner", the party said.   

[…] The Commission’s new report, based on interviews conducted with victims and witnesses over several years, describes a “hellish existence for women and girls”, with widespread rape being perpetrated by all armed groups across the country.

The Security Council decided today to extend the mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan for one year, as two delegates abstained over the incorporation of language related to human rights and climate change.

More than 70 percent of South Sudan’s population will struggle to survive the peak of the annual ‘lean season’ this year, as the country grapples with unprecedented levels of food insecurity caused by conflict, climate shocks, COVID-19, and rising costs, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Friday.

In this newly released fact sheet from the project Climate-related Peace and Security Risks (CPSR), experts look at how South Sudan is vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Intercommunal clashes, mostly involving cattle, have killed nearly 70 people across various parts of South Sudan in the past week, according to witnesses and officials.

South Sudan’s unity government marked its two-year anniversary against a backdrop of stalled constitutional progress and ongoing cycles of community violence – often fuelled by political groups and armed militias – the senior UN official in the country told the Security Council on Monday. (-> Meetings Coverage)

At least 440 civilians died in brutal fighting between rival factions in southwestern South Sudan over just a few months last year, the United Nations said on Tuesday. The report comes on the heels of a warning by the United Nations last month that the world’s youngest country risked a return to war, with bouts of interethnic violence and political infighting threatening to undo even the limited progress made in implementing a stuttering peace process.