South Sudan achieved independence in 2011 in a referendum that followed a bitter, decades-long war between rival factions in the north and south of Sudan.
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FILE – In this Friday, April 29, 2016 file photo, the then South Sudan’s First Vice President Riek Machar, left, looks across at President Salva Kiir, right, as they sit to be photographerd following the first meeting of a new transitional coalition government, in the capital Juba, South Sudan.
“While the panel has received preliminary reports from two sources that the jets were serviced and painted in Uganda, the panel has not yet been able to confirm their origin or if these jets have been purchased or are on loan”, the monitors said.
South Sudan plunged into conflict soon after Kiir fired Machar from his post as vice president in 2013. Inflation has reached 660 percent and a recent confidential report by the United Nations claimed that the government was spending money on arms rather than funding social services in the country.
“Even without an global arms embargo, states should unilaterally suspend arms transfers given the likelihood that arms would be used to commit human rights violations”, Elizabeth Deng, Amnesty International’s South Sudan researcher told AP.
The report also says officials have focused on “mobilizing their respective tribes”, which has worsened ethnic tensions.
Ban said he would report to the council next month on whether South Sudan’s government is cooperating with the United Nations on the deployment of the regional force. During the July violence, “house-to-house searches were conducted in at least five neighborhoods in Juba, targeting mainly Nuer men and women, but also individuals perceived as ‘anti-government, ‘” the report says.
South Sudan President Salva Kiir, former deputy Riek Machar and those close to both men have looted the country in accumulating wealth that includes mansions, luxury cars and stakes in a number of businesses overseas, according to the report by The Sentry.
The visiting diplomats also pressed South Sudan’s government to hold accountable soldiers who have been accused of rampaging through a hotel compound popular with foreigners in the July chaos.
The new report says 80 to 100 soldiers overran the Terrain compound and “raped and gang-raped at least five worldwide aid workers and an unknown number of staff working at the compound, and executed John Gatluak, a Nuer employee of the NGO Internews in front of his colleagues in an ethnically targeted killing”.
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FILE – In this Monday, May 16, 2016 file photo, a group of government soldiers wait in line during a military parade celebrating the national army in Juba, South Sudan.
