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8056th Security Council Meeting: Sudan and South Sudan
Despite initial progress, implementation of the peace accord in South Sudan had been disrupted, the senior United Nations official in that country told the Security Council today, as he urged members to speak in one voice in persuading all parties to lay down their arms and return to negotiations.
Urging the members also to help address the world’s fastest-growing humanitarian crisis as he briefed the 15-member Council, David Shearer, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), said the world’s youngest country was beset by economic and humanitarian challenges. Some 7.6 million people needed aid, and so far, only 66 per cent of the funding requested had been received.
Mr. Shearer said the number of people displaced had risen to nearly 4 million during the first half of 2017. Of those, 2 million had fled to neighbouring Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Meanwhile, combatants were increasingly targeting civilians and aid convoys, he pointed out, urging the Government of South Sudan to do more to promote a positive attitude towards humanitarian efforts and remove bureaucratic impediments like additional taxes and fees on humanitarian organizations.
While local conflicts flared — their impact magnified by the proliferation of automatic weapons — security threats were more likely to come from civil unrest sparked by potential economic collapse, he continued. The economic crisis was further fuelling public frustration and undermining the Government’s capacity to deliver services to its people. Civil servants, in many cases, had not been paid for months.
For its part, UNMISS would soon open a permanent presence in parts of the country to deter violence and human rights abuses. “But, ultimately, it most critically depends on how the Government and opposition forces behave,” he added. The Mission was working with its humanitarian partners to align efforts better to focus on protecting civilians. With the space for compromise over the 2015 peace agreement narrow, the central conflict-resolution strategy must be political mediation via the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) high-level revitalization forum.
Festus Mogae, Chairperson of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, briefing the Council via videoconference from Juba, said his Commission remained focused on its mandate to monitor the implementation of the peace agreement and was committed to supporting IGAD in its upcoming revitalization forum.
He said that the forum constituted the best path to restore peace and rebuild governance in South Sudan, while national dialogue could play a complimentary role. The Commission’s working committees had conducted a full evaluation of the status of the implementation of the peace agreement and prepared a report that was under consideration. The document was scheduled to be finalized in October and presented to IGAD to form the starting point for discussions as part of the revitalization process.
Many Council members expressed concern that the window of opportunity to implement the peace agreement was slipping away. Urging that all sides to the conflict end the violence and return to talks, they also stressed the need to alleviate the suffering of South Sudan’s people and hold human rights violators and spoilers of peace to account.
The representative of the United States warned that the promise of hard-won independence was slipping away. “Each month, we have watched the situation in South Sudan become worse,” she stressed, expressing disappointment that the Council had failed to stem the flow of weapons into the country. For its part, the United States would not wait to act.
The Russian Federation said it was unfair to pin all blame for the crisis on the Government, emphasizing that the ceasefire could not be implemented without reciprocal measures by the opposition parties. He added that the implementation of an arms embargo would not alleviate the crisis, but, rather, further compound the situation. In its recent visit to the region, the Council had heard first hand that regional players were weary of stepping up sanctions pressure, he recalled.
The representative of China said that all parties to the conflict must return to the political track and demonstrate enhanced coordination aimed at a political settlement. Regional actors must seize the opportunity to become more involved in the mediation process, although full respect must be given to the leadership role of the Government in dealing with its country’s internal affairs.
Responding to the speakers, the representative of South Sudan said that his country had recently conducted a series of meetings on the situation there. His Government now intended to analyse and review the messages it had received including from the African Union Peace and Security Council ministerial communiqué issued on 20 September. It hoped to come out with more policies that would enhance cooperation and improve communications between the Government and UNMISS.
He also added that it was not his Government’s policy to obstruct the mandate of UNMISS, nor hinder humanitarian access. There remained difficult circumstances and challenges to the Mission’s operations, but there were also signs of improvement and some progress.
Also speaking today were the representatives of the United Kingdom, Uruguay, Japan, Kazakhstan, Sweden, Italy, Ukraine, France and Bolivia.
The meeting began at 10:06 a.m. and ended at 11:30 a.m.
