Item 2 : Enhanced Interactive Dialogue on report of the Commission on Human Rights  in South Sudan

7 March 2023

Joint Statement with Meezaan Centre for Human Rights and Geneva International Centre for Justice (GICJ)

Thank you President,

EAFORD and the Geneva International Centre for Justice thanks the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for its report and update on the crisis in South Sudan within 2022. 

We are still concerned about the trajectory of the country's level of violence and insecurity into 2023. Due to the delay in implementing the peace agreement, more than 20,000 people have been displaced, and at least 166 civilians have been killed amid the armed violence within the country. Since August, broad armed violence against civilians in the Upper Nile and Jonglei States has increased.

Pointedly, the perpetual humanitarian crisis is grim and has recently worsened. Over 74 percent of people still require humanitarian assistance in South Sudan, and within 2022 alone, among the civilians newly displaced, over 70 percent of them were women and children.

Food insecurity has also steadily increased, causing chronic malnutrition in over half of South Sudanese people and one-third of every child. In addition, we are alarmed by the reports of thousands of women and children experiencing abduction, sexual violence, murder, and forced recruitment.

EAFORD and the Geneva International Centre for Justice is deeply troubled and alarmed by these unceasing human rights violations. For this reason, we ask the South Sudanese government and the International Community to recommit their obligation to constitute peace-building mechanisms and conflict resolution methods to establish peace and put an end to these human rights violations.

I Thank You.