South Sudan

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted peace processes in Africa. In South Sudan, COVID-19 has not only presented a risk to the health and socio-economic circumstances of the citizenry but has also put a strain on the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS).

[…] Mr. Shearer also announced that, as of Monday, the protection of civilian (POC) sites in capital Juba have been re-designated as camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs).  … “The Government now has sovereign responsibility for the sites as it does with many other IDP camps across the country.” 

The United Nations said Tuesday that a second aid worker had been murdered in South Sudan this week in a vast and isolated region scarred by armed violence and lawlessness. The fatal shooting on October 30 brings the number of aid personnel killed this year in South Sudan to nine, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said, triple the death toll of 2019.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said it evacuated some 32 humanitarian workers following threats and violent attacks by youth groups in Renk town of Upper Nile State.

Starvation is being intentionally used as a war tactic in South Sudan’s brutal conflict, an UN-backed human rights panel said on Tuesday, releasing its latest report on the country.

The United Nations special envoy to South Sudan on Tuesday said almost no progress has been made in unifying the country’s warring forces under one army, as promised under a hard-fought peace deal.

While some South Sudanese experts recommend the government adopt a new economic system used by developing states to cut off black market currency exchange and stabilize skyrocketing prices, a new U.N. panel report says the real problem in South Sudan is deeply entrenched government corruption.

[….] “South Sudan also remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to be an aid worker. At least 122 aid workers have been killed since 2013,” he [United Nations aid chief Mark Lowcock] further said.

Although the transitional government in South Sudan continues to function, with state governors now appointed, among other developments, progress on the 2018 peace agreement “limps along”, the top UN official in the country told a virtual meeting of the Security Council on Wednesday.