SOUTH SUDAN. Jubal: The Chairperson of the United Nations Human Rights Commission on South Sudan, Yasmin Sooka, said that her commission is worried about the new levels of violence in South Sudan.
In a virtual conference, Sooka said that the level of violence in the conflict-ravaged country has reached alarming levels. The bloodshed and exactions faced by civilians are ‘the worst recorded’ since the country’s civil war began in December 2013.
“We have documented new levels of militia violence engulfing more than three-quarters of the country at a localized level in which children and women carry weapons and are traded as spoils of war,” Sooka told journalists.
According to the Commission, around 50,000 fighters were seen in Jonglei state and another 15,000 in a village called Likuangole in the same state.
In its latest report, the Commission describes “waves of attacks and reprisals” that have left hundreds of South Sudanese women, men, and children dead, maimed, or destitute in Jonglei State and the Greater Pibor Administrative Area.
Another member of the Commission Barney Afoko said that the signing of a new peace agreement did not yield results as its fruits did not reach the community level.
Afoko added that combatants use tribal differences as a tool to influence violence in South Sudan. The groups are both state-sponsored and from opposition camps.
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The UN Peace Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), says that over 4 million civilians have fled the violence in the country and 2.1 million of them live in foreign countries.
Journalists, non-governmental organizations (NGO) leaders, and those with opposing views have been arrested since 2013.
A peace agreement that was signed in 2018 did not include some army officials and members of rebel groups.
The Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan is due to present its report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on 10 March.
