Sudan’s military has an “overarching duty” to refrain from using violence against protesters and ensure that their human rights are protected amid concerns of a further escalation, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on Friday.
UN chief António Guterres said on Thursday that the “democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people” need to be realized through “an appropriate and inclusive transition process”, following the overthrow and arrest of President Omar al-Bashir by order of the country’s new military governing council.
September’s UN-backed South Sudan peace agreement is holding and has led to positive change, but tens of thousands of civilians in the war-weary nation are still reliant of life-saving humanitarian assistance, and time is running out. This was the message that David Shearer, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for South Sudan, relayed to the Security Council on Friday.
Sudan’s President Omar Bashir may have declared a country-wide “cessation of hostilities” but in the face of continuing nationwide protests against his rule, the peace process in Darfur has “once again” come to a standstill, a senior UN official told the Security Council on Monday.
“Alarming” food insecurity threatens nearly seven million people in South Sudan, according to a new report by three United Nations agencies appealing for greater assistance and better access to humanitarian relief.
United Nations investigators on Wednesday denounced a raft of gross human rights violations being perpetrated in South Sudan, where over the past year, incidents of rape have surged and abductions, sexual slavery and brutal killings “have become commonplace.”
A surge in sexual violence in South Sudan’s Unity state targeting victims as young as eight years old, has prompted a call from the UN human rights office, OHCHR, for urgent Government measures to protect victims, and bring perpetrators to justice.
Over the past few days thousands of desperate civilians have been fleeing a fresh outbreak of violence in South Sudan’s Equatoria state, seeking safety in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), many “suffering from trauma.”
Since the signing of a September 2018 deal between the South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his political rival and former deputy Riek Machar to end conflict in the country, political violence has “dropped dramatically,” David Shearer, head of the UN Mission in South Sudan told reporters on Tuesday.
Children are likely among the dead during a month of nationwide protests in Sudan with “scores” of others injured and detained, according to a top UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official, who spelled out that “children should never be targeted nor used or exploited”.
