African leaders urged to intervene in S.Sudan crisis

By Felix Nkambeh Tih & Hassan Isilow

KIGALI, Rwanda

Experts and human rights groups urged African leaders scheduled to meet in the Rwandan capital Kigali for an African Union summit this week to mediate to help end the conflict in South Sudan.

“African leaders gathering in Kigali should urge leaders of rebel groups and factions in South Sudan to immediately stop the conflict,” Shadrack Gutto, professor for African Renaissance Studies at the University of South Africa (Unisa), told Anadolu Agency.

Gutto said as a result of the conflict, there is already a food crisis in the country, and the situation could get worse after some neighboring countries closed their borders with South Sudan.

‘‘It’s a very worrying situation that urgently needs to be addressed. The crisis has created a huge influx of refugees to the borders of neighboring countries’,’ he said via telephone from Pretoria, South Africa.

South Sudan, the youngest nation in the world, largely depends on imports, including food, from neighboring East African countries.

The oil-rich country has been undergoing reconstruction after many years of civil war, which saw it secede from Sudan in 2011.

Two years after attaining independence, civil war broke out in South Sudan after President Salva Kiir sacked his Cabinet and accused Vice-President Riek Machar of planning a coup.

This April, Machar returned to South Sudan to take his position as vice president in a new unity government led by Kiir. But five days, ago conflicts broke out, claiming hundreds of lives.

Root causes

The African Union summit opened last Sunday in Kigali with the regular session of the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC).

African heads of state and government will meet on July 18 to make a final decision on matters deliberated on earlier by their ministers.

Netsanet Belay, director for research and advocacy at Amnesty International, said the conflict in South Sudan demonstrates the urgent need for African leaders gathering in Kigali to take steps not only to resolve such conflicts but also to tackle their root causes.

“Most if not all conflict and instability in Africa is linked to failures to address gross human rights violations, which allow a cycle of impunity to continue,” Belay said in a statement.

He called on the African Union to show that it has the determination to confront the current situation in South Sudan as well as other pressing issues on the continent.

According to experts interviewed by Anadolu Agency, the conflict in Burundi, the fight against terrorism, and human rights will also be discussed at the summit.

Ahmat Mahamat Borgou, political science professor at the University of N'Djamena, Chad, told Anadolu Agency that the issue of Boko Haram is one of the main themes of the summit, and particularly the financing of a multinational joint task force, which is pending.

Although already operational in the Lake Chad Basin, the task force with troops from Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and Benin is still facing a number of obstacles.

Borgou said the issue of terrorism will be stressed by Chad and its regional partners, who are fighting Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin.

"Africa is more than ever at the heart of terrorist’s threat… Boko Haram continues to propagate its negative waves in the region, particularly in Niger, which is the weakest link in the region,” Hichem Ben Yaiche, editor at New African and African Business, told Anadolu Agency.