The civil population, stuck in a noose of internal political rivalry, is once more the victim of violence, looting, assassinations, with many displaced. In Juba, fighting has resumed since 8 July between the two rival sides and the body count has reached the hundreds, with thousands more having to flee. The camps run by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the Protection of Civilians sites that house some 28,000 people were not spared and are actually being targeted by heavy shelling on 10 July.
In December 2013, two and a half years after declaring independence, a first outbreak of violence led to a civil war that lasted 30 months, claimed thousands of lives and uprooted 1.4 million people by September 2014. The peace agreement signed in August 2015 in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and the new national unity government did not manage to bring back stability. On the fifth anniversary of its independence, in a context of violence and bloody fighting, the spectre of a civil war is looming again.
Confronted with the altercations that resumed on 8 July 2016 and that jeopardise our humanitarian teams’ interventions, Solidarités International is calling upon the present stakeholders and the international community to put an end to the fighting, to ensure human lives and humanitarian access are respected.