UN: South Sudan is facing violent clashes as it struggles to implement power-sharing deal

Report from The Washington Times

By Edith M. Lederer - Associated Press 

Friday 05 May 2023

U.N.: South Sudan struggling to implement power-sharing deal

Photo by: Peter Louis. People who crossed from Sudan are seen at a refugee camp in Renk County, South Sudan, Wednesday, May 3, 2023. Sudan has plunged into chaos since fighting erupted in mid-April between the country's two rival top generals and there is increasing concern for those trapped and displaced by the fighting. (Peter Louis/WFP via AP)

UNITED NATIONS — South Sudan is facing violent clashes and increasing disillusionment and frustration as it struggles to implement the most challenging provisions of a fragile 2018 power-sharing agreement, U.N. experts say in a new report.

The world’s newest nation is struggling to integrate rival military forces, draft a new constitution and prepare for its first election as an independent country in December 2024, the experts monitoring sanctions against the world’s newest nation said in a report to the U.N. Security Council obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

The country’s stability “will likely turn on the government’s ability to reward the patience of those who remain committed to peace, rather than those who have sought to reshape it through violence,” the report says.

There were high hopes when oil-rich South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long conflict. But the country slid into a civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions when forces loyal to the current president, Salva Kiir, battled those loyal to the current vice president, Riek Machar.

Tens of thousands of people were killed in the war, which ended with the 2018 peace agreement, bringing Kiir and Machar together in a government of national unity. Under the agreement, elections were supposed to be held in February 2023, but last August they were postponed until December 2024.

View original: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/5/un-south-sudan-struggling-to-implement-power-shari/

[Ends]