International Violence and rights abuses threaten South Sudan’s stability, a UN report warns

[LeonardoBjj]

BY DENG MACHOL
Updated 4:23 PM BRT, March 2, 2024

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Mass violence and gross human rights violations in South Sudan continue unabated ahead of landmark elections due to take place in December, a report by the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan has warned.
Patterns of violence, violations and entrenched impunity continue to blight the lives of an extremely vulnerable population, the report said, warning that the already dire humanitarian situation in the country will deteriorate further.

The elections, the first since independence from Sudan in 2011, should signify a milestone in efforts to secure a lasting peace since the end of the civil war which raged in South Sudan from 2013, killing some 400,000 people. A peace deal was agreed in 2018 but implementation has been sluggish and violence persists in parts of the country.

The report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva Friday said the elections face severe political and logistical challenges, and the post-election legal framework remains uncertain.

Crucial steps in the 2018 peace agreement, including the the adoption of a permanent constitution, the unification of armed forces, and the establishment of transitional justice institutions, “remain outstanding or incomplete,” the report said.

“Time is running out for South Sudan’s leaders to implement key commitments, which are the building blocks for peace, for holding the country together, and advancing human rights beyond the elections,” said Commissioner Barney Afako.

The elections were supposed to take place in early 2023 but were postponed for 18 months, following earlier delays.

Nation and state-building efforts have faltered, while predation and repression have been entrenched, according to the report, adding that even as insurgency persists, violence is being instigated by political and military elites.

Women and girls have been particularly targeted, the report said, while abductions have become a “troubling exploitative enterprise.”


South Sudanese children are routinely denied access to health and education entitlements, going hungry, with adverse impacts on the country’s future, the report revealed.

The Commission also found that the armed forces were still using child soldiers. In 2019, the year after the peace agreement, the U.N. found there were still more than 19,000 child soldiers in South Sudan, one of the highest rates in the world.

“The drivers of violence and repression are well known, and while commitments have been made to address them, we continue to see a lack of political will to implement the measures necessary to improve millions of lives,”said Yasmin Sooka, chair of the commission.
South Sudan’s immediate and long-term future hinges on political leaders finally making good on their commitments to bring peace, and reverse cyclical human rights violations, Sooka said.

https://apnews.com/article/south-sudan-human-rights-election-un-report-0b7604473772b6d77b7c6c682a343fd0​

 

[LeonardoBjj]

Sudan’s war leaves deep scars in Geneina, a city of two massacres​

People in West Darfur’s capital still step over residue from the bodies of some of the 10,000 dead, and thousands have fled

Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state in Sudan, can feel like two cities in one. There are mass graves, abandoned armoured vehicles and homeless children, but also newly opened restaurants, bustling markets and factory-fresh Toyotas, nicknamed Kenjcanjia – meaning stolen in the local dialect – owing to their lack of registration plates.

Since war broke out between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April last year, the city has witnessed two major massacres. Decomposing bodies lay out on the streets for up to 10 days on both occasions, their flesh eaten by dogs and chickens. Residues from the bodies of the dead remain even now, stepped over by people as they go about their daily business.

Some districts in the centre of the city, where people displaced by conflict elsewhere in Darfur used to congregate in government buildings, have all but been abandoned. Buildings bear scorch marks and bullet holes on their walls from the fighting.

For two months from mid-April and then again for a week in early November, Geneina was convulsed by fighting that rapidly developed along tribal lines, pitting Masalit and other non-Arab people in support of the army against the RSF and allied Arab militia.

More than 10,000 people died in the city – mostly from the Masalit population – and thousands more fled west over the border to Chad.

Arab militias allied with the RSF laid siege to the city in May. On 15 June, the torture and murder of the Masalit governor of West Darfur state, Khamis Abbakar, allegedly by the RSF’s allies, prompted the exodus of thousands of people to Chad.

By 22 June, the Darfur Bar Association reported that Geneina had fallen. There were further clashes in early November, which ended with the last remaining soldiers from the army garrison fleeing – marking the RSF’s final victory in the city.

In the intervening months, details began to emerge of horrific abuses committed by the RSF and its allies in the city. On 13 July, a UN investigation discovered a mass grave of dozens of Masalit civilians near Geneina, all allegedly killed by the RSF between 13 and 21 June.

Some Masalit people opted to head towards what they perceived as the relative safety of the army garrison near Ardamata instead of Chad. They described being shot at while on the road to Ardamata on 13 June. “Arabs appeared from nowhere and started shooting at us,” said Fatima, who did not want to give her last name. “People were jumping into the river with their children [to dodge the bullets].” Fatima said her son lost his arm during the shooting.

Abakar Haroun, a member of a group tasked with burying the bodies of victims, said the task took days. “One day, I remember working from 8am to 6pm with colleagues burying people in a cemetery in the al-Shati neighbourhood,” he said.

Samia Osman (not her real name) said: “I counted 117 bodies in front of my house. We used to jump over the bodies to reach our homes.”

Arab civilians also died in the violence, many in shelling from army tanks that still stand abandoned in Arab neighbourhoods. A worker at the Sudanese Red Crescent – not an Arab himself – said the number of victims was unknown because Arab communities have their own system of collecting the dead. Emir Massar Aseel, a traditional Arab leader accused of committing crimes against the Masalit people, claimed the toll ran to thousands.

Hundreds of Masalits were also killed in a massacre in Ardamata on 5 November, following the army’s complete withdrawal from the Geneina area. Witnesses said the RSF and allied militia went house to house, seeking out Masalit people.

Jamal Badawi, a Masalit traditional leader from Ardamata, said 236 people were killed in his area alone. Speaking on condition of anonymity, another man who helped with burials said “the bodies were piled over each other like leather of animals”.

West Darfur state is now ruled by an administration close to the RSF. The new governor, El Tijani Karshoum, is trying to appease the population. He has called on those who fled across the Chad border to come back, offering consistent electricity and running water, often lacking in army-controlled areas, and implemented a strict night-time curfew from 7pm to 7am.

An uneasy normality has returned to the city despite its recent horrors. Weddings have resumed on weekends, and houses are being built in Arab neighbourhoods.

The presence of homeless children, however, serves as a reminder of the recent past. A former employee of the child protection unit of the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in Darfur said most were either orphans who lost their parents last year or the children of families who fled across to Chad but who returned without their parents due to the “terrible” conditions in Chad’s refugee camps.

Last Friday, the UN human rights office said both sides in Sudan’s civil war had committed abuses that might amount to war crimes including indiscriminate attacks on civilian sites such as hospitals, markets and camps for the displaced.

The US has already formally determined that the warring parties have committed war crimes and said the RSF and allied militias were involved in ethnic cleansing in West Darfur.
Both sides have said they would investigate reports of killings and abuses and prosecute any fighters found to be involved.

For now, the biggest threat in Geneina comes from the air. As it struggles to stem the tide of RSF advances, the army has launched bombing campaigns on RSF-controlled territory, driving a new exodus of civilian populations.

It was simultaneously preventing humanitarian access to RSF-controlled areas, said Leni Christiane, from the World Food Programme. “The situation in Sudan today is nothing short of catastrophic,” she said. “Millions of people are impacted by the conflict and are struggling to feed their families. We are already receiving reports of people dying of starvation, yet access challenges are making it incredibly challenging to reach areas where people need our urgent help the most.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-...deep-scars-in-geneina-a-city-of-two-massacres

- I didnt got the guts to post the real pictures.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

Sudan is collapsing – here’s how to stop it​

Its civil war is a vortex of transnational conflicts, but regional rivals must find a consensus to avoid an even worse calamity, writes Alex de Waal.
Executive Director, World Peace Foundation

The Sudanese civil war is brutal, devastating and shows no sign of coming to an end. It is fought principally between the Sudan Armed Forces, under the command of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, headed by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as ‘Hemedti’.

Hostilities erupted on 15 April, 2023. There is direct fighting between the two belligerents in the capital Khartoum, in Darfur and other parts of the country. The RSF is accused of atrocities against civilians, including killing, rape and pillage, while SAF aircraft have bombed civilian targets and critical infrastructure.

A risk of famine​

The war has caused a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented size. According to United Nations figures from January 2024, of Sudan’s 45 million people, 5.9 million are internally displaced and 1.4 million have fled as refugees, with 25 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, with a looming food crisis and risk of famine.

The prospects for a democratic transition, so bright after the non-violent uprising that overthrew the long-standing military-Islamist regime of President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, are buried in the rubble of Khartoum.

Sudan’s civilian movement has been scattered. Political parties are struggling to form a common platform. Many neighbourhood resistance committees, the backbone of the civic protests, have turned themselves into emergency groups for humanitarian services, while some have formed armed self-defence groups and others have disintegrated.

Sudan’s war is also a vortex of transnational conflicts and global rivalries that threaten to set a wider region aflame. From the Red Sea to the West Africa Sahel, from the Mediterranean to central Africa, neighbouring countries are affected by the flow of refugees, the movement of armed groups and the disruption of trade. South Sudan depends upon revenues from oil exports through a pipeline that crosses fiercely contested areas.

Most fighting in the civil war is directly between SAF and RSF but there are a number of other armed groups being drawn in, alongside new self-defence groups. The SAF is a quarrelsome coalition including Islamist securocrat veterans from the al-Bashir regime, who veto any moves by al-Burhan towards compromise with either Hemedti or the civilians.

The RSF is a novel amalgam of army, mercenary forces, trading conglomerate –notably in gold – and a vehicle for Hemedti’s political ambition. It shows indiscipline, with some RSF-aligned Arab militia pursuing local vendettas and land-grabbing and may fracture when its fighters run out of cities to loot.

A circle of conflicts​

Sudan’s war is entangled in a circle of conflicts involving its African neighbours to east and west. The RSF originated in the infamous Janjaweed militia of Darfur, and recruits from nomads in Chad and Niger, its units active in Libya and Central African Republic. Egypt backs the SAF but wants to suppress the Islamist elements within it.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia’s aggressive pursuit of access to the sea has reconfigured East African alliances. Ethiopia is now allied with the RSF, while Eritrea aligns with SAF. Talks between Cairo and Addis Ababa over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam have broken down, raising fears of a proxy conflict. South Sudan, still economically dependent on relations with Sudan, is also vulnerable.

Sudan has become a cockpit in which the rising powers of the Middle East seek to project their power and gain an advantage over their rivals. Surpassing long-established actors such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as relative newcomers such as Iran, Qatar and Turkey, the United Arab Emirates is the most assertive intervenor, backing the RSF and providing arms and money to Chad and Ethiopia.

The wider Red Sea is an arena of geo-strategic contest where the embers are already smouldering for a wider war that drags in all the world’s main powers. Russia’s Wagner Group is an active military and commercial partner with the RSF – it is heavily invested in Sudan’s gold industry.

The looming crisis​

The breadth of these complications has no precedent, but the contours of the looming crisis have been evident for some years. Sudan has wrestled for decades with the twin problem of an apparently bottomless economic crisis and governing an ethnically and religiously diverse nation.

The civilian-led cabinet headed by Abdalla Hamdok, formed after the 2019 civic revolution, could neither stabilize the economy nor loosen the military kleptocrats’ stranglehold over the most profitable sectors. Left to fend for themselves by international donors that failed to appreciate the urgency of a massive bailout, the democrats’ failure was preordained.

Al-Burhan and Hemedti jointly launched a coup in 2021. But the two generals couldn’t solve Sudan’s problems. They were just more ruthless in staying in power – by the same token sharpening the dispute between themselves.

Since civil war broke out last year, a succession of efforts to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table has failed. The United States–Saudi talks in Jeddah, an Egyptian initiative, and repeated efforts by northeast African leaders, have stumbled because of internal Sudanese veto or outside interference.

Conspicuously lacking is a mechanism for ensuring that the Middle Eastern powers – especially the UAE – come to the table with constructive proposals. The US has not raised its political engagement to a high-enough level for it to be taken seriously in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

It should not be difficult to reach a consensus across Africa and the Middle East that state collapse is in no one’s interest. A common goal of preventing the worst outcome should override differing preferences for who should lead the country.

Mechanisms for building such a consensus existed a decade ago. They included the Sudan Consultative Forum, convened by the United Nations and African Union and involving all interested parties, which was left to wither. The AU Peace and Security Council, which has a record of forging such a consensus agenda, is a shadow of its former self. The United Nations has reduced itself to humanitarian provider.

For the Sudanese, the stakes are existential. The state has collapsed and the path to rebuilding it is long and fraught. Atrocities in western Darfur may amount to genocide. Millions are homeless. Half the country is hungry with many facing famine.

If Sudan remains an international orphan, the calamity will only deepen.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/the-world-today/2024-02/sudan-collapsing-heres-how-stop-it

 

[SakurabasEar]

I only looked at yer pictures..

 

[Ballsaque]

LOL at the pictures getting more and more unhinged the further you go. Was that Wario?

 

[LeonardoBjj]

LOL at the pictures getting more and more unhinged the further you go. Was that Wario?

- I searched Snes gold and Wario popped!
The original pictures of the article are too sad.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

US announces over $47 million in humanitarian aid for war-torn Sudan​

BY NOHA ELHENNAWY
Updated 12:19 PM BRT, March 21, 2024

CAIRO (AP) — The U.S. announced more than $47 million in humanitarian aid for war-torn Sudan and two neighboring countries, to where at least a million people have fled in the nearly 1-year-old conflict.

The aid package is expected to help alleviate the suffering of nearly 25 million people, including refugees who have fled the country into Chad and South Sudan, according to a statement Wednesday from the U.S. State Department.

“This U.S. humanitarian assistance provides critical life-saving assistance including food, water and sanitation facilities, shelter, medical services including mental health support, and protection to Sudanese fleeing the conflict,” it said.

The fresh funds bring to more than $968 million the total U.S. humanitarian aid for Sudan since last year, the statement said.

Sudan plunged into chaos last April, when long-simmering tensions between its military led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo broke out into street battles in the capital, Khartoum. Thousands have been killed.

More than 9 million people are thought to be internally displaced in Sudan, and 1.5 million refugees have fled into neighboring countries.

The U.S. relief funds were announced by Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration Julieta Valls Noyes during a meeting in N’Djamena with Chadian Prime Minister Succès Masra, whose country will receive $18 million of the entire package, according to a statement posted by the US Population, Refugees and Migration Bureau on the social platform X, formerly known as twitter.



Chad alone has received nearly 700,000 people from Sudan since the conflict erupted, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The U.S. seized the opportunity to renew its calls on warring parties to end hostilities. “Preventing a famine and long-term catastrophe will require both a ceasefire and unhindered humanitarian access,” the statement said.

The U.S. announcement came the same day the U.N. director of humanitarian operations, Edem Wosornu, told the Security Council that Sudan might become the world’s worst hunger crisis with 18 million people already facing acute food insecurity. She stressed the need for humanitarian aid complaining that the U.N. appeal for $2.7 billion for Sudan was less than 5% funded — receiving just $131 million.

https://apnews.com/article/sudan-us-aid-34cbbb22ca534f12adb34fc3db552d91

 

[Cole train]

Sudan about to join russias africa crusade if they werent already

(Though wagners main force is currently in ukr)