South Sudan famine is a wake-up call to revive dead peace deal
Article
Comments (2)
email Email
print Print
pdfSave
separation
increase
decrease
separation
separation
By Brian Adeba
News that a famine has been declared in South Sudan is yet another
stark reminder of the ever evolving nature of war-induced fragility in
Africa’s newest country. As the world rushes in to feed a starving
population it is imperative that we don’t lose sight of the root
causes of this famine.
The three-year-old war is instrumental in fermenting the conditions
that birthed the famine. In fact, it’s not a coincidence that the
epi-center of the famine is in Unity State, the scene of the heaviest
fighting between government troops and the armed opposition since the
outbreak of the conflict.
While immediate needs must be addressed, the famine is but the symptom
of a much larger problem—war. For the international community to
extricate itself of the obligation of treating the symptoms of a
serious disease, it needs to understand the ailment afflicting the
patient.
At independence in 2011, South Sudan’s political elite installed a
kleptocracy in power. In this system, corruption is not an aberration
but the very essence of government itself. Institutions to hold public
officials accountable were hijacked and stymied of their
effectiveness.
For instance, no public official who was investigated by the
Anti-Corruption Commission, has ever been prosecuted in a court of law
in the history of the country.
The South Sudan National Audit Chamber, another oversight institution,
has not publicly produced any audits of government accounts since 2012
and suffers from a serious backlog. The 2012 audit was for the year
2008. As a matter of fact, since South Sudan’s independence, there has
been no audit of government accounts by the Auditor General.
The country’s politicians argue these anomalies in accountability are
due to “lack of capacity,” an issue they stress is inherent in new
states. In reality, there is no political will to fight corruption. As
a result, the ability of institutions to investigate or prosecute
corrupt officials, has been deliberately undercut, through various
methods, including starving them of the funds they require to operate.
The absence of accountability fostered a free-for-all looting spree of
public coffers. An estimated US$ 4 billion was stolen by top
politicians and their network of collaborators. Since 2013,
Transparency International has ranked South Sudan as one the world’s
most corrupt countries. Of the 176 countries surveyed in 2016, South
Sudan ranked number 175.
Subsequently, the state became the most prized asset in the eyes of
the politicians, an object of intense competition by rival camps
within the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), who all
aspired to seize control of it in order to help themselves to the
gravy train of state funds and resources. Poor management of the
ambitions and expectations of competing factions within the SPLM that
were vying to capture the state, resulted in the contest being
expressed in violent terms.
In essence, therefore, unfettered corruption created a high-stakes
competition for state capture in which violence was used by rival
factions to outdo the other. This is how South Sudan was plunged into
war in December 2013.
It is still worth reminding ourselves though, that the backdrop to the
unfolding famine is the collapsed peace deal midwifed by the IGAD
countries in August 2015. After plenty of foot-dragging by the
government and the armed opposition, hope seemed to be on the horizon
when both parties agreed to form a transitional government in April
2016. Barely three months later, the agreement unraveled and Riek
Machar, the head of the armed opposition, was forced to flee Juba,
subsequently ending up in South Africa where his freedom of movement
has been restricted.
Despite the fact that the peace deal has collapsed and serious
fighting continues in many parts of South Sudan, the government,
including the African Union (AU) and the IGAD member states, believe
the peace deal is working.
Meanwhile a significant number of troops in the armed opposition have
refused to endorse Deng. As the charade that the peace agreement is
alive continues, war rages unabated producing the conditions necessary
for the famine in the country.
As long as this charade continues, South Sudanese will continue to pay
the ultimate price. The international community will be forced, yet
again, to raise millions of dollars to treat the symptoms of the
disease rather than its root causes.
An honest and realistic assessment that aims to get the actors in the
conflict talking again is needed at this time.
To create a conducive atmosphere for peace talks and ensure aid
reaches to the needy, the AU and IGAD should use their clout to
realize a nation-wide ceasefire. A new round of talks should be
initiated to review the shortcomings behind the collapse of the
agreement, especially the components on power sharing and security
arrangements. Lastly, an inclusive process of negotiation should
ensue. The unintended consequence of killing the peace deal is the
emergence of new armed actors into the conflict. For a credible
process to ensue, these actors must be included in the talks.
The famine should be a wakeup call for the international community,
the AU, and IGAD to take a reality check.
Reviving the peace deal and stopping the war is key to preventing
famines in South Sudan.
Brian Adeba is Associate Director of Policy at the Enough Project in
Washington D.C. Reach him on Twitter @kalamashaka
Comments on the Sudan Tribune website must abide by the following
rules. Contravention of these rules will lead to the user losing their
Sudan Tribune account with immediate effect.
- No inciting violence
- No inappropriate or offensive language
- No racism, tribalism or sectarianism
- No inappropriate or derogatory remarks
- No deviation from the topic of the article
- No advertising, spamming or links
- No incomprehensible comments
Due to the unprecedented amount of racist and offensive language on
the site, Sudan Tribune tries to vet all comments on the site.
There is now also a limit of 400 words per comment. If you want to
express yourself in more detail than this allows, please e-mail your
comment as an article to [email protected]
Kind regards,
The Sudan Tribune editorial team.
22 March 10:00, by Kuch
Mr. Brian Adeba, you can go to bed early and re-dream chap. There
is going to be no damn re-negotiation of anything again. By the way,
we are pretty well ahead of these dirty intrigues you criminals have
been toying around in our country and our people. The evil corporate
America, the UK, their UN, their evil juus and their sleazy NGOs can
take our and our people hostage simply>>>
repondre message
22 March 10:04, by Kuch
to use our country and our people as their bargaining chips
and blackmails to crawl their evil selves into our country! Good luck
to them, we don’t want to have anything to do with your damn evil
white Americans, British people, their evil juus and some of their
criminals in between. Fellows, watch this space.
--
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 https://groups.google.com/group/SouthSudanKob.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SouthSudanKob/CAJb14oqnDikg1mkP0EUyELDbWqwYnuj0gpD_yavZCGw6vcnR4g%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
