Saturday, August 27, 2016

South Sudan's Misleaders

One year after South Sudan's peace agreement, the head of the truce's monitoring group has said the country is worse off today than it was before.

Festus Mogae, head of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC) and former Botswanan president, said that the largest problems stemmed from "security... that is where we've made the least amount of progress."

Mogae said the main reason behind the peace agreement's failure stems from the "bad blood" between Kiir and Machar, rather than the deal itself.  "It was never with the agreement...We were trying to persuade him [Kiir] that they were leaders and they should think of the welfare of the people, but they failed to do that…the leaders as a whole have duty to work together to bring about peace and being to develop this country," said Mogae. "For now, the people of South Sudan are worse off than before."

Tens of thousands of people died in the conflict that followed. Many starved to death. More than two million people were displaced.

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