South Sudan at risk of ‘return to full-scale war’, UN warns

UN report warns of ‘escalating atrocity risks’ amid renewed fighting and widespread impunity over abuses.

A United Nations investigative body has warned that South Sudan risks “a return to full-scale war” unless it can urgently put an end to entrenched impunity and widespread abuses amid escalating violence in the world’s youngest country.

The report by the UN’s Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan (CHRSS), released on Friday at the Human Rights Council session in Geneva, found that civilians were enduring severe abuses including killings and “systematic” sexual violence, arbitrary detention, forced displacement and deprivation amid a deepening humanitarian crisis in one of the world’s most impoverished countries.

It said “escalating atrocity risks” and the collapse of political safeguards in the country made “urgent preventive action imperative”, calling on regional and international actors to engage with diplomatic pressure, sanctions and enforcing the UN arms embargo until concrete improvements in human rights and accountability are achieved.

“Preventing further mass atrocity crimes, institutional collapse, and the destruction of South Sudan’s fragile transition requires urgent coordinated national, regional and international re-engagement,” the report said.

The report, drawing on a year of investigations and testimony, blamed the actions of political and military elites – in detaining opposition leaders, eroding power sharing and attempting to change the terms of a 2018 peace agreement – for placing a peace framework in the country under major strain and increasing instability.