South Sudan Is In A Crisis

The War Over Peace South Sudan More than 30 top hotels recently filed a lawsuit against the government of South Sudan because it failed to settle bills worth $60 million that it accrued from hosting peace talks delegations years ago. The problem is, South Sudan is broke. It’s so broke that in December, the East African country was scheduled to hold an election, the first since it won independence from Sudan in 2011, but was forced to postpone it to 2026, partly because it has failed to execute a constitution or a census – but mostly it couldn’t pay for it. That’s not surprising considering the young country is facing the worst economic crisis since independence, according to the International Rescue Committee. As a result, civil servants and state employees, including soldiers and teachers, haven’t been paid in a year. And now, in spite of a peace agreement that mostly halted a civil war in 2018, some worry that the economic crisis will lead the country to again explode into conflict within itself when the peace deal expires in February. “When you remove the glue, it can all break down,” Daniel Akech of the International Crisis Group told the Economist. Two years after winning independence in 2011, civil war broke out after the president, Salva Kiir of the Dinka ethnic group, and the vice president, Riek Machar of the Nuer group, began feuding. About 400,000 people died in the conflict, more than 2.4 million people fled the country, and another 2.3 million were displaced internally. Much of the fighting stopped after the peace agreement in 2018 which divided power between the two sides. Still, not all groups that eventually got involved in the conflict signed on to the agreement, which is why peace talks are continuing in fits and starts, the Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, the situation in the country is dire: It’s facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with about 80 percent of the population experiencing a “high level of food insecurity” in November, an increase of 7 percent over 2022, the World Bank reported. At the same time, the population faces devastating droughts and flooding, worsening the food security situation, ruining livelihoods, causing disease outbreaks, and contributing to displacement. Alongside this, the country of 11 million is grappling with 800,000 refugees that crossed the border from Sudan after war erupted there in 2023. The war in Sudan is a big reason why South Sudan is broke: It has cut off most cross-border trade and more critically, closed its main oil pipeline that carried two-thirds of South Sudan’s oil exports to the Red Sea coast. Oil exports make up as much as 98 percent of government revenue. As a result, the economy shrank by more than a quarter in 2024, according to the International Monetary Fund, while inflation rose to 120 percent – among the highest rates in the world. Now, to turn things around, Kiir’s transitional government says it wants to diversify its economy and capitalize on its mineral riches, and maybe even bypass Sudan by working with China to build an alternative pipeline to Djibouti via Ethiopia, Bloomberg noted. None of this, however, will alleviate the economic crisis in the short term, analysts say, or the security crisis that is brewing. Besides a rise in kidnapping and extortion by gangs and unpaid soldiers, an armed insurgency in the south threatens civilians and endangers the peace process, the Council on Foreign Relations wrote. There has also been a rise in violence stemming from community-based militias and civil defense groups, driven by border disputes and sectarianism, according to the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Writing in the Conversation, South Sudan expert Steven C. Roach said the country won’t be able to get on track in its current trajectory and with its current leadership. For example, he believes the multiple delays in holding elections over the years are likely due to President Kiir’s fear of the consequences of losing power: He would likely be tried by a war crimes court due to be set up by the 2018 peace agreement. He also detailed how Kiir has used his political and economic power to divide the opposition and repress civil society groups, journalists, and the opposition while having allowed corruption to run rampant to keep the elites on his side. “Kiir steered South Sudan to independence,” he wrote. “However … he has to answer for sowing division and fostering violence and corruption that has diminished hope for long-term peace, democracy, and national unity.”