New Report: Neighborhood Watch: Mobilizing Regional Action for Peace in South Sudan Posted by Enough Team <http://www.enoughproject.org/blogs/enough-team> on Jun 09, 2015
[image: Neighborhood Watch] A new report released today, *Neighborhood Watch: Mobilizing Regional Action for Peace in South Sudan <http://eno.ug/1JHn9hZ>*, describes the competing political and economic interests of South Sudan’s neighbors that have so far undermined regional willingness to take action against the warring parties, including imposing targeted sanctions and an arms embargo. The warring parties have little interest in making compromises for peace when there is no cost for not doing so. Neither the region nor the international community have held South Sudan’s leaders to commitments made at the negotiating table, including nine signed agreements to cease hostilities, all of which have been violated within days. Continued inaction by the region and international community has reinforced a culture of impunity as the conflict on the ground has intensified. In order to bring the conflict to an end, the United States and other key international partners must take steps to ensure that regional interests and strategies are aligned with multilateral efforts to increase pressure on the warring parties. *"South Sudan's peace process is playing out like a deadly poker game among regional elites where the stakes keep getting raised, but nobody has a particularly good hand. Regional players like Uganda and Sudan have placed bets on the conflict, providing support for either the government or opposition forces, in order to maintain their access to South Sudan's natural resource wealth. Unless the U.S. and other key international partners step up both diplomatic efforts and economic pressure, neither of the warring sides are likely to fold anytime soon.*" -Justine Fleischner, Sudan and South Sudan Policy Analyst On December 15, 2013, tensions between factions loyal to President Salva Kiir, of the Dinka ethnic group, and those aligned with his former Vice President, Riek Machar, of the Nuer ethnic group, exploded into fighting on the streets of the capital city Juba. South Sudan’s dramatic return to war has torn communities apart, left countless thousands dead, and over two million displaced <http://www.unocha.org/south-sudan/>. Since the regionally led peace process broke down in March 2015 <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article54192>, fighting on the ground has intensified, including targeted ethnic killings, rape, the recruitment of child soldiers, and other war crimes, as documented by Amnesty International <https://www.amnesty.org/en/articles/news/2015/05/south-sudan-escalation-of-violence-points-to-failed-regional-and-international-action/> and Human Rights Watch <https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/06/05/south-sudan-children-battlefield>. *Neighborhood Watch: Mobilizing Regional Action for Peace in South Sudan <http://eno.ug/1JHn9hZ>*, following extensive research in the region and dozens of interviews, outlines how economic pressure could fundamentally alter the calculations of the warring parties. In order to build regional support for targeted sanctions, the Enough Project recommends that the United States and other key international partners focus on cutting off the money flows that fuel the conflict, building political will and technical capacity for regional sanctions enforcement, and working with regional players to build economic and political incentives for peace. -- To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/southsudankob View this message at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/southsudankob/topic-id/message-id For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/SouthSudanKob. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SouthSudanKob/CAJb14ooZH11qxL-AWEQFibMRsw%3DqG1crnNimanguni1YWZ6bPA%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
