However, the monitors received reports that government troops have made significant, ongoing arms procurements including the likely recent acquisition of two L-39 fighter jets.
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A two-year investigation by a US -based watchdog group, The Sentry, has uncovered evidence that South Sudan’s feuding President and former vice-president have exploited the country as a kleptocracy, stealing millions of dollars with the complicity of foreign bankers, lawyers, arms dealers and other businessmen. The World Food Program has said both South Sudan’s government and the opposition have held up food shipments in parts of this East African country, which is trying to recover from civil war.
South Sudan’s leaders must allow civil society to carry out its work freely, and they should focus on settling this conflict once and for all so that all South Sudanese people can live with security and dignity.
The US government says it is the largest humanitarian donor to South Sudan but Congressional officials have recently threatened to cut off support.
Israel’s opposition lawmaker, Tamar Zandberg told AP that Israel stopped sending firearms to South Sudan in 2013, but that export licenses for surveillance equipment continues.
It documented the lavish lifestyles of Mr. Kiir’s children, who have attended private schools in Australia, Malaysia and other foreign countries.
The report also accuses the two leaders of benefitting “financially from the continuing war and have effectively ensured that there is no accountability for their human rights violations and financial crimes”.
A United Nations panel of experts has concluded that heavy fighting that engulfed South Sudan’s capital Juba in July, forcing vice president and ex-rebel leader Riek Machar to flee, was “directed by the highest level” of the country’s military.
“The leaders of South Sudan’s warring parties manipulate and exploit ethnic divisions in order to drum up support for a conflict that serves the interests only of the top leaders of these two kleptocratic networks and, ultimately, the worldwide facilitators whose services the networks utilize and on which they rely”.
What are the major findings of the report?
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The report by The Sentry, which was co-founded by actor George Clooney, says that in 2015 it began “to follow the money that has been and continues to be amassed” by networks loyal to either Kiir or Machar.
