South Sudan’s president and opposition leader announce the creation of a unity government

Seven years after the beginning of one of the cruellest conflicts in the history, the leaders of South Sudan have agreed to form a government of unity. The South Sudanese leader has explained that this transitional government will take care of any "unfinished business".   The agreement -- which was signed just after the UN released a report on war crimes in the country -- marks a significant breakthrough after several years of stalled negotiations.

In a closed-door meeting, President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar have announced that they want to form a unity government before Saturday.  The peace agreement signed in September 2018 between the government and the main rebel groups included the formation of a unity government by May 2019. However, the creation of this government has been delayed in two occasions - May and November - for different reasons.

The president of the country doesn't want to delay the formation of this agreement. For this reason, he has announced that "the unity government will start functioning this Saturday".  In addition, he has promised protection to the opposition leaders in Juba.  " I've taken on this responsibility as president. My forces will be responsible for security in Juba and in the meantime, if there are outstanding issues, we will negotiate them until we reach an agreement," the president said, according to Radio Tamajuz.

"The South Sudanese should no longer be held hostage.  I've agreed with the president of the country on a timetable to implement the outstanding issues of the peace agreement," Riek Machar said on his Twitter account at the end of the meeting.  Kiir also announced that he would dissolve the current government before the formation of the transitional executive next Saturday and called on the people of South Sudan to accept peace in the country. The unity government plans to elect 35 ministers, ten deputy ministers and 550 deputies during the transitional period before the elections, as well as five vice-presidents, including Machar.

However, Barney Afako, a Ugandan lawyer and conflict mediator, doesn't believe that this government means peace in the country. "This doesn't mean it's all over. It's just the beginning of a prolonged trench war in the political space. There are still many battles to overcome, but the hope is that they will be political battles," he explained in an interview with the New York Times.

South Sudan became the world's youngest nation after gaining independence from Sudan as a result of an agreement that ended Africa's longest war.  Two years later a civil war broke out after President Salva Kiir, who belongs to one of the majority ethnic groups in the country, decided not to include Riek Machar, who belongs to the Nuer ethnic group, in his government.  This civil war has killed around 400 000 people and forced thousands more to leave their country.  In August 2018 a peace agreement was signed, an agreement that included the formation of a joint government, an executive that seems to be a reality a year and a half later.

This agreement has coincided with the publication of a report by a commission of investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, which states that the population of Southern Sudan was "deliberately deprived of food" in different parts of the country for ethnic and political reasons and that the population is still suffering sexual violence.

The report - which will be presented to the Human Rights Council on 9 March - considers that destroying crops or denying access to water is "a war crime of starvation" whose purpose is "to starve the civilian population", as explained by Professor Andrew Clapham, a member of the Southern Sudan Human Rights Commission. According to the UN, this strategy seeks to "deprive enemy communities of resources and thereby force their surrender".

The United Nations has blamed Government of Southern Sudan officials in a press release for being "implicated" in the "looting of public funds, as well as money laundering, bribery and tax evasion".  "Senior officials have used their official positions to manipulate decisions on the allocation of state resources and official procurement, diverting public funds for their own benefit," said Commission Chairman Yasmin Sooka.

According to the report, such attitudes on the part of the government are having a "catastrophic impact" on the country, where more than 55 percent of the population faces food insecurity.  In addition, the UN Human Rights Council is certain that soldiers can "self-compensate" and forcibly remove certain tribes from their land.  In the document, they will present next March, they’ve also recorded numerous attacks and violent campaigns led by both the Kiir government and the Machar rebels.

Among the several attacks to the civilian population, sexual abuse stands out. Such violence has created a situation of "terror and subjugation" and has made Southern Sudan an "unsafe" environment.  Meanwhile 1.4 million people have been forced to flee their homes and live in camps where they have no opportunity to satisfy their basic needs. The situation has been made worse by the floods of 2019 and by swarms of desert locusts.  It’s important to maintain and increase our support to the people of Southern Sudan to restore or improve their livelihoods and food production and to increase the capacity of the government to respond to the locust outbreak," said Meshack Malo, FAO Representative in Southern Sudan.

This report has shown that although there is a peace agreement in the country since 2018, the people haven’t seen any improvement in their living conditions. The formation of a unity government is a step forward to escape the spiral of violence in which this nation has been immersed since its independence. However, the future of Southern Sudan depends on the functionality of this Executive, a government that has the challenge of guaranteeing the security of its population and creating a unified armed force, in one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world.  Southern Sudan now needs a Government that will enable the country's citizens to stop dreaming of peace and to make it a reality.