No sustainable peace for South Sudan

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) sharply criticizes the peace agreement for South Sudan. According to the human rights organization, the agreement is “not sustainable”, as it hardly addresses the real problems behind the 20 months of lootings, war, mass murder and expulsion that have ravaged the country. “Since the signatories are already disassociating themselves, what’s the use of the peace agreement?” is how Ulrich Delius, Africa-consultant of the STP in Göttingen, commented on the issue on Wednesday. He accused the warring parties in South Sudan of lacking the political will to find an agreement that is in the best interest of the civilian population – which is ravaged by the civil war. “Surely, an insufficient peace agreement is better than none at all, but the international community should not be deluded into believing that the guns will fall silent. New conflicts are inevitable.” Following massive pressure by the UN Security Council, the US, China and the EU – and after weeks of hesitation – South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir finally agreed to sign a peace agreement with the rebels under Riek Machar.

“The people in South Sudan are hoping for a first step towards a better life and more jobs,” said Delius. “But the agreement does not cover much more than the balance of power between the warring parties. There are no tangible and binding provisions towards keeping peace and improved living conditions – just hope.”

“For South Sudan, this is not a day of rejoicing. The agreement is not enough to effectively stop hunger, armed conflicts and human rights violations,” warned Delius. It will help to keep an elite in power that systematically ignores the needs of the civilian population and that, in the four years since the state became independent, mainly focused on military buildup. Thus, one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world has spent around 20 million Euros to purchase new weapons from China, Russia and Israel since the summer of 2014 alone, as stated in a report published by independent experts of the United Nations on Tuesday.

“The peace agreement will not lead to an end to impunity – and there will be no punishment for those who are responsible for the violent deaths of about 55,000 people since the beginning of the civil war in December 2013,” criticized the human rights activist. All conflict parties are said to have committed crimes against humanity. UN experts are accusing the government’s troops of terrorizing the population in Unity State between April and July of 2015, and of deliberately keeping the civilians from returning home. The capital city Juba is affected by arbitrariness and violence too, not only the rural areas. There, the authorities are pressurizing journalists. In a press conference on August 16, 2015, president Kiir announced that critical journalists might be facing the death penalty. Three days later, when the newspaper editor Moi Peter Julius was apparently murdered for political reasons, Kiir said that there had been a misunderstanding about his statement. Journalists are systematically threatened, there are arbitrary closures of newspapers, and the editors practice self-censorship in order to survive.

According to Delius, another sign that there is not much hope for a democratic development in South Sudan is the fact that Kiir decided to suspend eight of the ten elected governors from office. Riek Machar, his former and future Vice-President, is regarded as ruthless power seeker as well.

Header Photo: Freedom House/Flickr