UN Human Rights and UNMISS have identified nine key individuals believed to bear the greatest responsibility for the violations committed between February and May 2022. The report indicates that, according to some political analysts, the root causes of the violence in Unity State are political tensions and rivalries among different sections of the Nuer ethnic group. That peace was short lived, however, due to tensions re-emerging between Government and opposition forces in February 2020. However, it was violated in July 2016 with clashes mainly concentrated on the capital, Juba, that also led to the distinct alignment of warring parties to the Government (SPLM-IG) and the opposing faction loyal to Riek Machar, the SPLM/A-IO.įollowing the more recent Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan in September 2018, Unity State had returned to relative calm. A first peace agreement, the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan was signed in August 2015. The southern part of Unity State has experienced repeated violent clashes involving military forces and armed militias since the onset, in December 2013, of the larger South Sudanese power struggle between President Salva Kiir Mayardit and then-Vice President Riek Machar. Approximately 44,000 civilians were displaced from at least 26 villages. Many of the abductees were subjected to sexual violence, with a total of 131 cases of rape and gang rape documented, including girls as young as eight-years-old and a nine-year-old girl who was gang-raped to death. The report also reveals that these violations were committed during clashes between joint Government Forces and affiliated armed militias on one hand, and on the other, by elements of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army in Opposition (SPLM/A-IO (RM)) – loyal to former Vice-President Riek Machar.Īt least 28 villages and settlements were affected during the clashes- with an estimated 173 civilians killed, 12 injured, and 37 women and children abducted. The report follows 32 verification missions conducted in three counties – Koch, Leer, and Mayendit – and neighbouring areas. These include gross violations and abuses of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law in southern Unity State, namely killings and injuries, abductions and sexual violence, as well as forced displacement and attacks on humanitarian facilities and personnel. The findings of these investigations were documented in a report published in September. This account from a rape survivor in Padeah, Unity State, South Sudan, is one of the numerous testimonies collected by UN Human Rights and United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) investigators following the violence against civilians that took place in the region from February to May 2022. Most women gave-in to the rape because they were afraid that their raped instead of them.” They beat and lashed us with sticks until we reached Mirmir Payam where we were raped several times in front of our children. forced us to carry food items and other goods they had looted from our village. “When Padeah was attacked on 16 February, I was taken from my village along with more than 20 other women and our children.
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