As South Sudan in preparing for its first election as an independent country, calls have been mounting for the country’s leaders to take the necessary steps to deliver peaceful, free, fair and inclusive vote to end the transitional period that has lasted for more than a decade since the country’s independence in 2011.
Located in a volatile region, South Sudan is faced with a complex interplay of ethnic rivalries and historical enmities threatening to tear the world’s newest nation apart. Nicholas Haysom, the head of the UN mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), has 14,000 peacekeeping troops stationed across the country, which is only slightly larger than France, in an attempt to prevent a descent into another calamitous civil war. Nicholas has recently requested another battalion, an extra 1,000 soldiers, as the UN Security Council said the nation faces ‘existential crisis’ because it is far from prepared for its first election as an independent country. “I want to underscore that the prospect of a second war in this region of the kind we’re witnessing in Sudan would be absolutely catastrophic,” Haysom says in reference to a civil war that left at least 400,000 dead.
South Sudan’s upcoming election, which should normally be a unifying coming-of-age moment for the embryonic state, is fast becoming a source of mounting anxiety. Senior UN officials have warned that any vote perceived as unfair, corrupt and non-transparent risks pushing one of the world’s poorest states back into nationwide conflict. “…we remain concerned that the preparations for elections on 22 December remain behind schedule,” Jonathan Hollis, the Acting Deputy Political Coordinator, told the UN Security Council meeting on South Sudan last week. “We urge the government to fully disperse the resources needed to enable crucial preparatory work to get underway.” Also, the US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield has urged South Sudanese government to “engage in urgent dialogue, and bring this transitional period … finally to an end through peaceful and legitimate elections.”