Reporting that 650 children have been recruited into armed groups in South Sudan since January, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNCEF) called today for an immediate end to recruitment and an unconditional release of all children by armed actors.
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Hundreds of people died and more than 100,000 fled across the border.
Uganda is host to more than 600,000 refugees and asylum seekers, making it the third-largest refugee hosting country in Africa and the eighth-largest in the world.
The ethnically charged war has forced more than one in five of South Sudan’s 11 million people to flee their homes and around half of the country’s children do not attend school.
President Kiir said on Monday that his government was also investigating the attack on the compound.
The IOM said the population count was important for the delivery of humanitarian services, particularly for the UN World Food Programme to provide food for the full population registered at the site.
He said Deng would discuss issues that have been outstanding since the south’s independence from Khartoum in 2011.
Mr. Machar reached the Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday, said Lambert Mende, Congo’s information minister.
The U.S. has spent $1.6 billion trying to quell the escalating violence, with little success.
January 2014: A ceasefire is signed between the government and the opposition.
The United Nations 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.
South Sudan’s security operatives have imposed restriction on media coverage of successful escape into Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) of the armed opposition leader and the first vice president, Riek Machar.
Recently, it was revealed that several brutal beatings and rapes had taken place in South Sudan last month, with the victims being foreign aid workers both male and female.
It however remains unclear whether Machar and his followers will heed the directive from the government. Its mission in Juba declined to comment on whether it had any part in evacuating Mr. Machar, but the mission has maintained its full impartiality throughout the conflict.
Mr Gai had told the heads of state Summit in Addis Ababa that he will step down once Dr Machar returns to Juba, otherwise he will continue with the implementation of the August 2015 peace agreement.
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A spokesman for the DRC government, Lambert Mende, denied they had been in touch with any party on helping the former South Sudanese vice president but Haq said Machar was extracted from an area close to the border with South Sudan.
