Südsudan

“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.

The United States and European allies say a new flare-up of fighting in South Sudan violates that country’s peace agreement, and are demanding the clashes end immediately. A joint statement Wednesday from the U.S., Britain and Norway, known as the Troika, says the fighting around the town of Yei represents a “flagrant breach” of a December 2017 cease-fire and the revitalized peace deal signed by South Sudan’s government and several rebel groups last September.

[…] The United Nations said most of the attacks were conducted by youth militias and by elements of forces aligned with Mr. Kiir. A smaller number of attacks were linked to opposition fighters supporting Mr. Machar.

Over the past few days thousands of desperate civilians have been fleeing a fresh outbreak of violence in South Sudan’s Equatoria state, seeking safety in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Three holdout opposition groups announced on Friday the establishment of a new alliance group calling for three autonomous governments in Bhar El Ghazal, Upper Nile and Equatoria. The National Alliance for Democracy And Freedom Action (NADAFA) is founded by the People’s Democratic Movement, the Workers Party of Upper Nile, and Federal Democratic Party/Army.

South Sudan's rebel leader Riek Machar is planning to return to Juba in May under a power-sharing deal that a UN envoy said Tuesday offered the "best chance" of ending the war.

Since the signing of a September 2018 deal between the South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his political rival and former deputy Riek Machar to end conflict in the country, political violence has “dropped dramatically,” David Shearer, head of the UN Mission in South Sudan told reporters on Tuesday. … Despite the fall in political violence, conflict is still ongoing, said Mr. Shearer, pointing to, among others, ethnic violence that has led to killings, and in the South of the country, where the fighters of Thomas Cirillo’s National Salvation Front have been involved in clashes with Government forces.

At least nine people were killed in fresh clashes in Amadi State in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria, officials said. The weekend clashes pitted the National Salvation Front (NAS) led by Gen Thomas Cirillo, and a faction of the Dr Riek Machar-led SPLM-IO.