UN rights expert calls for action on South Sudan genocide
A man collecting bodies to bury in a mass grave approaches a burned hut containing charred corpses, on the outskirts of Yei, in southern South Sudan. Picture: Justin Lynch, AP File A man collecting bodies to bury in a mass grave approaches a burned hut containing charred corpses, on the outskirts of Yei, in southern South Sudan. Picture: Justin Lynch, AP File
Geneva - World powers can stop a
"Rwanda-like" genocide in South Sudan if they immediately deploy
a 4 000-strong protection force across the country and set up a
court to prosecute atrocities, the head of a UN human rights
commission said on Wednesday.
Africa's newest nation plunged into civil war in December
2013 after a long-running feud between President Salva Kiir and
his former deputy, Riek Machar, exploded into violence, often
along ethnic lines.
"South Sudan stands on the brink of an all-out ethnic civil
war, which could destabilise the entire region," commission
chief Yasmin Sooka told an emergency session of the UN Human
Rights Council in Geneva.
Fighting was expected to escalate again now that the dry
season had started, she said. Gang rape was happening on an
"epic" scale, she added, citing cases of women being raped at a
UN site in the capital Juba within sight of UN peacekeepers.
Washington and other powers called the one-day meeting after
Sooka's commission reported this month that ethnic cleansing was
already taking place in South Sudan, which only seceded from
Sudan in 2011.
Kiir has denied there is any ethnic cleansing and South
Sudan's ambassador at the council, Kuol Alor Kuol Arop, said his
country saw no need for the special session.
International pressure including the threat of sanctions has
so far failed to halt the fighting in an oil-producing country
at the heart of a fragile region, including Sudan, Ethiopia and
the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The warring sides agreed to a set up a court backed by the
African Union in 2015, but one has not appeared.
There was an urgent need for a tribunal "with a strong focus
on command responsibility for atrocities," the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, told the
meeting.
South Sudan's government has also said it will allow a
4 000-strong regional protection force to bolster the UN's
existing peacekeeping mission there. But it has also not arrived
and Sooka said there were fears it would not operate beyond the
capital.
"We urge the immediate deployment of the 4,000-strong
regional protection force for South Sudan... People all across
the country asked that it not be restricted to the capital if it
is to protect civilians across South Sudan," she said.
The forum is due to vote on a resolution later in the day
that would extend the mandate of the UN human rights
commission in South Sudan for a year.