GENEVA
The 2018 Revitalized Peace Agreement in South Sudan is at “serious risk” of collapse unless regional powers urgently step in to halt escalating violence and political repression, the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warned Friday.
“South Sudan’s peace agreement is in crisis,” said Commission Chair Yasmin Sooka in a statement. “The renewed violence is pushing the Revitalized Peace Agreement to the brink of irrelevance, threatening a total collapse. Such a breakdown risks fragmenting the country even further.”
Military offensives by the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces (SSPDF), including recent airstrikes on civilian areas, have led to widespread casualties and displacement, the statement noted.
A state of emergency is in effect in multiple regions, with reports of Ugandan forces supporting SSPDF operations and new military recruitment campaigns that defy the agreement’s security reform commitments.
“South Sudanese are living with extreme trauma,” Commissioner Carlos Castresana Fernandez said for his part. “The world cannot remain as bystander while civilians are bombed, and opposition voices are silenced. The time for passive diplomacy is over – these senseless attacks must stop.”
The commission highlighted the arbitrary detention of opposition figures, including First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar, and shrinking civic space as additional signs of a deepening crisis. Upper Nile State, already facing emergency-level food insecurity, has been particularly impacted and is now a key corridor for refugees fleeing Sudan’s conflict—fueling fears of regional destabilization, it stressed.
Commissioner Barney Afako warned that undermining the peace process is “an act of profound folly and recklessness” that will “reignite violence, deepen insecurity, and impose further grave violations on long suffering citizens.”
The commission called on the African Union and IGAD—an eight-country trade bloc in Africa— to intensify diplomatic pressure and restore the peace roadmap, warning that failure to act could trigger another devastating cycle of conflict in the Horn of Africa.
