Government of South Sudan responsible for possible war crimes, according to the UN

Members of South Sudan's government are responsible for human rights violations amounting to “war crimes” in the southwest of the country, the UN said Friday, adding that it identified 142 people whose acts will be investigated.

Since its independence from Sudan in 2011, the youngest country in the world has been mired in political-ethnic violence and chronic instability.

Violence and instability prevent him from recovering from the bloody civil war that caused nearly 400,000 deaths and four million displaced people between 2013 and 2018.

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

In early March, a joint report by the United Nations Country Mission (UNMISS) and the United Nations Human Rights Office stated that at least 440 civilians were killed between June and September 2021 in the Tambura region, in Western Equatoria State (southwest of the country).

This happened in factional fighting between Vice President Riek Machar and the army loyal to President Salva Kiir.

On Friday, the United Nations Human Rights Commission in South Sudan released a new report stating that it “had reasonable grounds to believe that members of the South Sudanese government committed acts amounting to war crimes” in the states of Central and Western Equatoria.

The Commission “established a list of 142 people who justify being investigated 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 his mother.

More than two million Southern Sudanese have fled the country in what constitutes the “biggest refugee crisis in Africa”, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

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