Human rights organizations, genocide watch groups and the UN secretary-general are warning of a potential genocide in South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, and asking the UN Security Council and regional leaders to take action.
“All of the early warning signals for mass atrocities in South Sudan are there,” a special commission to South Sudan reported at a UN Human Rights Council meeting December 14.
UN Warns of Potential Genocide in South Sudan Amid Renewed Violence The five-year-old nation remains in turmoil despite the nominal end of a three-year civil war in August 2015. The war, which began as a political conflict between the country’s president and then-vice president, members of different ethnic groups, ended up taking shape along ethnic lines, pitting the country’s two largest ethnic groups, the Dinka and the Nuer, against each other, and exacerbating tensions among others.
“There is an increase in polarized ethnic identities, a culture of denial, and in some areas, systematic violations that have been planned, South Sudan commission chair, Yasmin Sooka said in a statement.