Advocates in Denver Decry Rights Abuses in South Sudan 

Feb­ru­ary 22 is the lat­est dead­line set by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing the lead­ing spon­sors of peace in South Sudan – the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom, Nor­way, and Italy –for both the gov­ern­ment and the oppo­si­tion to reach an agree­ment and resolve the con­flict in the war-torn country.

This dead­line to form a uni­ty gov­ern­ment and cease hos­til­i­ties came after oth­er dead­lines in May and Novem­ber of 2019, respec­tive­ly, were extend­ed. Oth­er attempts to return to peace, includ­ing agree­ments nego­ti­at­ed in 2015, 2017, and 2018, failed, thus pro­long­ing the conflict.

Since it gained inde­pen­dence from the Repub­lic of Sudan in 2011, hopes for a uni­fied, peace­ful, and fledg­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic South Sudanese nation were quick­ly dashed when war broke out between the gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion par­ty forces.

Now in its sixth year, the civ­il war began in Decem­ber of 2013 after a peri­od of dis­agree­ments between Pres­i­dent Sal­va Kiir and oppo­si­tion leader and then vice-Pres­i­dent, Riek Machar, about how best to share pow­er and resources in the eth­ni­cal­ly diverse and oil-rich coun­try of 13 mil­lion people.

The rul­ing par­ty, the Sudan People’s Lib­er­a­tion Move­ment-In Gov­ern­ment (SPLM-IG), led by Kiir, and the main oppo­si­tion par­ty, the Sudan People’s Lib­er­a­tion Move­ment-In Oppo­si­tion (SPLM-IO), led by Machar, who is in exile, are the dom­i­nant forces. But an array of a dozen armed groups and oppo­si­tion par­ties have since emerged or mor­phed, caus­ing what Abi­gail Van Buren of the U.S. Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions calls “polit­i­cal splin­ter­ing.” She says the dis­parate agen­das of all these groups have con­tributed to mak­ing the con­flict res­o­lu­tion process much more difficult.

In trac­ing the ori­gins of the con­flict, Jen­nifer Williams of Vox says all hell broke loose in 2013 when forces loy­al to Machar clashed with forces loy­al to Kiir. The pre­cur­sor to con­flict and the results includ­ed the dis­missal of the vice-pres­i­dent, his cab­i­net mem­bers, and pub­lic accu­sa­tions by Kiir of an attempt­ed coup by Machar to over­throw his government.

“More than 1,000 peo­ple were killed and anoth­er 100,000 were dis­placed in the just first week of fight­ing alone. Machar fled the cap­i­tal city of Juba, and the Nuer ele­ments of the army broke away and fled with him.”

With this back­drop, recent news on South Sudan is filled with reports of a human­i­tar­i­an cat­a­stro­phe, with civil­ians flee­ing into neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, refugees encamped in shel­ters, pol­lu­tion from unsafe oil wells, and dis­ease, includ­ing a 2018 measles out­break that killed dozens.

Accord­ing to the Unit­ed Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), the pro­tract­ed con­flict is the largest refugee sit­u­a­tion in the African con­ti­nent since the 1994 Rwan­dan geno­cide. The agency says there are an esti­mat­ed 1.3 mil­lion South Sudanese refugees, many of them in neigh­bor­ing coun­tries of the Great Lakes region of East­ern Africa, includ­ing Kenya, Ugan­da, and Ethiopia.

The cri­sis is a top pri­or­i­ty for the so-called Troi­ka nations; the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom, and Nor­way, as well as the region­al Inter-Gov­ern­men­tal Author­i­ty on Devel­op­ment (IGAD), the U.N., and the African Union (AU) which says the issue remains a top pri­or­i­ty in 2020.

Just as the AU met for its 33^rd ordi­nary ses­sion of heads of states and gov­ern­ments in Ethiopia on Feb­ru­ary 10, edu­ca­tors and human rights activists in Den­ver were hold­ing a dis­cus­sion on the mat­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Denver’s Josef Kor­bel School of Inter­na­tion­al Studies.

Con­ven­er, Peter Van Ars­dale, a pro­fes­sor of African stud­ies at Kor­bel and a long-time advo­cate for South Sudan’s inde­pen­dence, is lead­ing an effort to resolve dif­fer­ences among South Sudanese peo­ples in America.

He says favoritism and bias are at the root of the prob­lem the young nation faces today. Dreams have not been ful­filled for the peo­ple of South Sudan, he told the audi­ence made up of stu­dents, pro­fes­sors, human rights activists, and the community.

“Bureau­crats have turned the sit­u­a­tion into klep­toc­ra­cy and cor­rup­tion has weak­ened essen­tial insti­tu­tions,” he said.

Van Ars­dale is the author of a book about human rights called The Tree of Rights: A Metaphor for Engag­ing Human Rights’ Devel­op­ment and Debate. Explain­ing the poten­tial of a res­o­lu­tion to the mat­ter, he used a con­cept he terms “the tree of rights,” which he said has been adopt­ed by Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, to show how the South Sudan peo­ples could claim their rights peacefully.

In this effort to high­light the sit­u­a­tion, Van Ars­dale is work­ing with Ani­ta San­born, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Col­orado Epis­co­pal Foun­da­tion, as well as with the Sudanese com­mu­ni­ty in Den­ver to bridge differences.

Since she became involved with the Sudanese com­mu­ni­ty in Col­orado, San­born and her fel­low Epis­co­palians, Luther­ans, and oth­er faith-based and non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions have reset­tled many Sudanese refugees in the state. She said she was excit­ed when the new nation of South Sudan was born in 2011. Now, she says she is shocked to learn about what was going on with chron­ic under­de­vel­op­ment, a state of famine, suf­fer­ing chil­dren, and the floods that have made things worse.

With the con­flict unre­solved, many more peo­ple are flee­ing South Sudan, she said. She became involved because of the human­i­tar­i­an issues ema­nat­ing from the conflict.

San­born said an esti­mat­ed 7.5 mil­lion South Sudanese cit­i­zens are cur­rent­ly suf­fer­ing, with an esti­mat­ed 4.5 mil­lion who are displaced.

The event includ­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from David Mayen, a for­mer sol­dier with the Sudan People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army (SPLA) and for­mer spokesper­son for Taban Den Gai, one of South Sudan’s vice-pres­i­dents. Mayen has been in exile in Col­orado since 2018. He said he fled the con­flict, first to Ugan­da, and then to the U.S., because “I could not take it any­more.”  He says many of his col­leagues in the media were killed because of their crit­i­cism of the gov­ern­ment. Many peo­ple have been abduct­ed, tar­get­ed, and killed based on their eth­nic group, he said.

“I can’t defend the inde­fen­si­ble,” Mayen said.

For Ken Scott, a human rights spe­cial­ist and pros­e­cu­tor who worked at The Haque, “there has been a lot of def­er­ence to Africans to fig­ure things out and solve prob­lems, even while the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty tries to get involved.”

“In 60-years of mas­sive vio­lence, no one has ever been held account­able,” he said.

Asked to shed light on what may be a pos­si­ble court sys­tem to bring jus­tice to per­pe­tra­tors of crime in the con­flict, he said this may be dif­fi­cult since the coun­try is not a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC) in The Hague. He said there have been a small num­ber of cas­es tried, all in spe­cial or mil­i­tary courts, but since the sys­tem is dom­i­nat­ed by the gov­ern­ment, “there is no real account­abil­i­ty.” he said.

“South Sudan is not cur­rent­ly sub­ject to the juris­dic­tion of any inter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal court,” Scott said.