A statement from Machar’s SPLM-IO party said the leader had been “evacuated to a safe country within the region” without naming Congo.
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The capital Juba was hit with violence in July, where over 140 rival militias died and experts fear that the world’s newest nation will fall back into civil war unless both sides look to work on strengthening a peace deal from August 2015.
This UN base in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, is home to 30,000 displaced people, living in fear of targeted killings by government forces. Machar fled the city to an undisclosed location, and Kiir replaced him as vice president with Taban Deng Gai, a former ally of Machar.
In an interview this month in Unity state, one former child soldier said he had expected to do cooking and cleaning in the army when he joined at age 16 but instead was sent to fight on the front lines. “At this precarious stage in South Sudan’s short history, UNICEF fears that a further spike in child recruitment could be imminent”.
South Sudan, the youngest country in the world is witnessing horrific abuses of its youngest citizens. South Sudan’s government has recruited child soldiers in the past week to prepare for a renewed conflict, according to an internal United Nations document obtained by The Associated Press.
Five years later, South Sudan is torn by violence, unspeakable atrocities committed against civilians, and a dire humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people.
South Sudanese government which had been on the offensive, trying to hunt him down in the bush where he had been hiding said on Friday that it was not aware of Machar’s whereabouts. The region had little violence during the country’s civil war, which began in December 2013.
Their signing of the roadmap, which had already been signed by the Sudanese government, had raised hopes of a breakthrough after successive rounds of abortive talks.
President of South Sudan Salva Kiir [R] and former vice president Riek Machar.
“The systematic use of rape, sexual exploitation and abduction as a weapon of war in South Sudan must cease, together with the impunity for all perpetrators”, Forsyth said. “The accounts highlight, in raw detail, the failure of the United Nations peacekeeping force to uphold its core mandate of protecting civilians, notably those just a few minutes’ drive away”, the Associated Press reported.
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The UN told Kiir that any political changes must be consistent with the peace deal, which stated that the vice president must be chosen by the South Sudan Armed Opposition.
