Such a force has been a key demand of former vice president Riek Machar, who fled the capital, Juba, after the outbreak of violence.
Advertisement
The proposal for a new unit in South Sudan was backed by the African Union and discussed at a meeting in Ethiopia by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad), an East African regional body, which said South Sudan had approved the move.
“This failure to manage the crisis, in particular, manifested itself in a lack of urgency to enhance the security. culminating in the abandoning of sentry posts when armed elements were approaching the berm leaving the PoC (Protection of Civilian) site fully exposed and, ensuring that civilians would be placed in serious risk in the very location to which they had come for protection”, the summary said.
After the meeting, South Sudanese information minister Michael Makuei Lueth, expressed his government support to the decisions of the IGAD summit, saying the regional force is “a protection and not intervention force”.
South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011 and gained independence and control of vast oil reserves in a process guided by the US and other Western powers. His rival, President Salva Kiir, replaced him with Taban.
Politics in South Sudan have always been plagued by splits and rivalries as leaders switch allegiances in a complex contest for power and influence in the oil-producing nation, which gained independence from Sudan only five years ago.
The latest violence followed the collapse of the power-sharing government in July.
But a presidential decree issued on Tuesday showed that Cabinet posts including the interior and petroleum portfolios in the oil-rich state had been filled with allies of the new vice president, Taban Deng Gai.
The latest setbacks are putting the fragile peace plan at risk. This has led to a worsening of the political dispute in the newest country in the world, and has sparked threats of more fighting.
Thousands of people have been killed and more than three million forced to flee their homes in the war that started in December that year, when Kiir sacked Machar only two years after the country seceded from Sudan. An estimated 4.8 million people are severely food insecure across the country, with a quarter of a million children facing severe acute malnutrition.
Some 6.1 million people, more than half the country’s population, are in need of humanitarian assistance, the United Nations said.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, briefs the media in Juba at the end of his three-day mission to South Sudan on August 3.
Advertisement
“We have documented at least 217 cases of sexual violence in Juba between 8 and 25 July”, said the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.
