Members of the government of South Sudan are responsible for human rights violations amounting to "war crimes" in the south-west of the country, the UN said on Friday March 18, adding that it had identified 142 persons whose actions are to be investigated.

Since its independence from Sudan in 2011, the youngest country in the world has been plagued by political-ethnic violence and chronic instability, which have prevented it from recovering from the bloody civil war which claimed nearly 400,000 dead and four million displaced between 2013 and 2018.

A peace accord signed in 2018 by sworn enemies Riek Machar and Salva Kiir remains largely unimplemented, and the UN warned in February of a "real risk of a return to conflict" in the country. 

In early March, a joint report by the UN Mission in the country (Minuss) and the UN Human Rights Office claimed that at least 440 civilians were killed between June and September 2021 in the region of Tambura, in the state of Western Equatoria (southwest), during fighting between factions of Vice President Riek Machar and the army loyal to President Salva Kiir.

On Friday, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in the country released a new report saying it has “reasonable grounds to believe that members of the government of South Sudan have engaged in acts (.. .) amounting to war crimes” in the states of Central Equatoria and Western Equatoria.

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Rape, sexual slavery of women and murder of children

The commission has "established a list of 142 people who warrant investigation for a series of crimes under national and international law", its president, Yasmin Sooka, told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. . 

The report describes numerous human rights violations, including rape, sexual slavery of women, murders of dozens of children, including at least one baby beaten to death in front of its mother. 

"The idea that violence at the local level is unrelated to the state or to national-level conflict, as suggested by the government and South Sudanese military elites, is a mistake," Sooka said. 

"These killings, massacres, torture, kidnapping, detention, looting, burning of villages and forced displacement as well as rape and sexual violence at the local level are a reflection of an intense political struggle for power (...) at the national level “, she added. 

The 2018 peace agreement provides for the principle of power-sharing within a government of national unity, formed in February 2020 with Kiir as president, and Machar as vice-president. 

But their rivalry persists, leaving the country in chaos.

More than two million South Sudanese have fled the country in what constitutes "the largest refugee crisis in Africa", according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). 

On Friday, UNHCR appealed for $1.2 billion (1.09 billion euros) to provide assistance and protection to around 2.3 million South Sudanese living in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, in Kenya, Sudan and Uganda.

With AFP

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