As hostilities escalate across South Sudan, the United Nations Security Council should renew its arms embargo on the country. The council should also act to prevent additional weapons from reaching the warring parties and foreign forces from adding to the violations.
In recent months, government forces have attacked populated areas, often using helicopter gunfire and air-dropped munitions, putting civilians at grave risk. In March, Human Rights Watch found that the government had used improvised incendiary bombs that horrifically burned and killed dozens of people, including children, in Upper Nile state, exacerbating an already catastrophic humanitarian situation. The use of incendiary weapons in populated areas may amount to war crimes.
Tens of thousands of people have fled the current hostilities, many to neighboring countries. Humanitarian access remains difficult, with aid organizations facing bureaucratic restrictions and attacks, as evidenced by the recent bombing of a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital.
South Sudan has been under a UN arms embargo since 2018. The restrictions prohibit weapons transfers and external military support to the country’s warring parties.
The recent deployment of armed Ugandan soldiers and military equipment in South Sudan was a brazen violation of the embargo, as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reported.
The South Sudan government’s house arrest of opposition leader Riek Machar and other opposition members without due process risks returning the country to protracted conflict.
The Security Council should call out Uganda’s violation of the embargo and ensure it is extended for another year to help protect civilians from abusive forces. The council should also press the South Sudanese leadership to ensure that the UN peacekeeping mission, UNMISS, can move freely and safely in the country.
For years, South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has called for lifting the arms embargo, eroding support among some states for the UN sanctions. Last year the council only narrowly approved a resolution to renew the embargo until May 31, 2025.
Rather than lifting the arms embargo, which could embolden the warring parties to commit further atrocities, the Security Council should keep it in place and hold violators to account.
