UN Special Envoy urges Security Council to try to prevent civil war renewal in South Sudan
UN (AP) – South Sudan’s top UN official on Wednesday urged the UN Security Council to use its influence to prevent the world’s latest countries from falling into a civil war again.
Nicholas Haysom warned that competition between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and one of the country’s vice presidents has escalated into a direct military confrontation between his parties.
He said the recent battle in the northern part of the country, the arrest of First Vice President Riek Machar and a movement of misinformation, disinformation and hate speech “increased political and racial tensions, especially on social media.”
“These conditions have allowed the conflict in 2013 and 2016 to occupy the lives of 400,000 people,” warned Haysom, the UN Special Envoy and head of nearly 20,000 United Nations peacekeeping missions.
After Sudan’s oil-rich South Sudan gained independence in 2011, high expectations for peace and stability were placed.
However, the country slipped into the civil war in December 2013 when Kiir, who was loyal to the country’s largest race, called Dinka, began to fight those loyal to Machar, who came from the second largest race, called Nuer.
The 2018 peace agreement was very fragile and was implemented slowly. The presidential election has been postponed to 2026.
Haysom said the 2018 agreement “still be the only viable framework to break the violence cycle in South Sudan”.
“The important priority now is to urgently avoid recurrence to full-scale conflict, refocus on accelerating the implementation of the agreement and promote the transition to the first democratic elections in South Sudan,” he said. “Another war is a risk that South Sudan can’t afford at all, and that is not affordable in a wider region.”
Hersom said peacekeeping forces are in intensive diplomatic efforts with the African Union, the intergovernmental development agency or the IGAD, the Vatican and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to promote a peaceful solution.
He called on the Security Council, the United Nations’ strongest institution, to urge competitors to comply with the ceasefire, exercise constraints and resolve differences through open dialogue.
Edem Wosornu, head of operations at the UN Humanitarian Office, reminded the Council that she warned the “perfect storm” of humanitarian, economic, political, security and environmental crises in August while unfolding.
“The situation worsened sharply,” she said eight months later.
Wasunu said there are 9.3 million South Sudanese, three-quarters of the population, and half of them need humanitarian assistance, half of which are children.
“Nearly 7.7 million people were anxiously hungry, up from 7.1 million in the same period in 2024,” she said.
Vosonu said the UN Humanitarian Office project said 650,000 children under the age of five are at risk of severe acute malnutrition this year.
“If the political crisis is not avoided, the humanitarian nightmare will soon become a reality,” she warned.
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