On March 21, Eugene Owusu, the United Nations resident representative in South Sudan, who was in Ottawa at the invitation of the Canadian Government, met with a small group of NGOs at the Oxfam/CCIC office. Eight NGO representatives participated in person, and another four took part remotely by conference call. The meeting was chaired by Krista House, Senior Program Officer in the International Humanitarian Assistance Bureau, who was the organizer of the Ottawa program and had previously met Owusu during a mission to Juba in which she participated.
Mr. Owusu is the quadruple-hatted UN Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Coordinator, UNDP Resrep and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for South Sudan. The primary purpose of his visit to Canada was to confer March 21-22 with officials at Global Affairs Canada (GAC). He was also scheduled to meet with members of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association.
There follows below a report of some of the subject areas touched upon by Mr. Owusu in his exchanges with the NGO group. Perhaps the most policy-relevant is the last section, ‘The dire humanitarian situation in Soith Sudan’.
Implementation of the August 2015 South Sudan Peace Agreement
According to Owusu, the implementation of the “Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan” signed in August 2015 by Salva Kiir, the President of the Government of the Republic of South Sudan (GRSS) and by Riek Machar, the leader of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO), is the key to the restoration of peace in South Sudan. However, the complex and unwieldy agreement negotiated under the auspices of IGAD, a Horn of Africa sub-regional organization, has not yet come into effect because after so much bloodletting in a ruinous and barbaric civil war, there is total lack of trust on both sides. Only after many failed attempts at mediation and the application of heavy international pressure was it possible to get the South Sudan peace agreement signed by both sides, though still under duress.
The peace agreement is signed bu not yet implemented. A key provision is to reconstitute a ‘Transitional Government of National Unity’ (TGONU) by bringing the two principal belligerents (Kiir and Machar) together in the capital Juba from which Machar was driven out, and to re-establish the status quo ante — Kiir as President and Machar as First Vice President of the GRSS.
However, Machar has so far adamantly refused to return to Juba, insisting on ironclad guarantees for his safety and full integration for him and his supporters into the yet to be constituted TGONU. To guarantee Machar’s personal safety, some 1,070 members of Riek Machar’s personal security detail are expected in Juba shortly. Machar has also asked for the transport of heavy weapons to Juba for his personal security detail, which seems contrary to the spirit as well as the letter of the peace agreement.
Another reason suggested by Owusu for the slow implementation of the peace agreement is that countries within IGAD, under whose auspices the agreement was being negotiated, have their own interests and concerns and are not all pulling in the same direction.
Yet a further setback was President’s Kiir’s unilateral decree in October 2015 to subdivide the current 10 states of South Sudan into 28 — an evident circumvention of the peace agreement. However, Owusu cautioned that the international community should not over-react to this blatant act of force majeure because it was probably made to counter an earlier proposal by Machar to subdivide the country into 21 states — an equally blatant attempt to gerrymander for partisan advantage.
Owusu added that despite the feigned outrage of SPLM-IO, Kir’s ‘new states’ proposal in the midst of launching a transitional government has in fact not been a show stopper. At the February meeting of the international oversight body, the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (JMEC), chaired by former Botswana President Festus Mogae, both sides agreed to take the creation of new states off the agenda because they think they will be able to resolve the creation of new states off-line.
The State of the South Sudanese economy
This will be a principal determinant of the success or failure of the peace agreement, according to the UN resrep. He cited evidence that the South Sudan economy was in freefall. The currency has collapsed. The official exchange rate with the dollar is 3:1. However, the effective bank exchange rate is 32:1 and the black market rate is 40:1. Oil production has tumbled. With the international price of oil at $29 per barrel, it makes no sense to take it out of the ground because the pipeline transit fee alone payable to the Government of Sudan to get the oil even as far as Port Sudan is $25 per barrel.
Moreover, the GRSS is already in arrears in the payment of salaries to many of its public servants, which risks instability and breakdown of government processes. The national financial situation is bleak even before the economic cost to implement the peace agreement has been factored in: e.g., the integration of 50,000 SPLM-IO and other militia fighters into the South Sudan armed forces could cost $25-40 million per year. Also, there will be need for an effective DDR (disarm, demobilize reintegrate) program, without which disaffected military may run rampant.
It is also evident that the TGONU will not have the resources to establish a $100 million Special Reconstruction Fund (SRF) as set out in the peace agreement. Owusu said that the SRF was inserted to establish the principle that the GRSS bears primary responsibility for its own sustainment — but principles aside, the prospect of the GRSS paying toward reconstruction is unrealistic.
The frustrations in working with the Government of South Sudan
Several NGOs vented their frustration about red tape, lengthy delays and costly fees for work visas, lack of cooperation from the South Sudan authorities even for distribution of humanitarian aid to vulnerable communities in extreme need.
Particular dismay was expressed over a recently enacted 2016 NGO law, imposing ever more tedious and restrictive conditions on NGO operations, and giving the South Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) the authority to “run NGOs”.
UN humanitarian coordinator Owusu urged the NGOs not to challenge the prerogative of a sovereign country to have an NGO Act, but rather to zero in on the details of implementation which were most vexatious.
He expressed optimism that the new South Sudanese Minister of Cooperation who is likely to take office under the TGONU will be a lot more sympathetic and easy to work with than the current minister.
Some faint signs that national reconciliation may yet be possible
On the other hand the SPLM-IO advance party is already in Juba and working surprisingly well with GRSS colleagues on arrangements for the TGONU. Most of the cabinet positions assigned to the opposition have already been notionally allocated by consensus, including the all-important oil minister (98% of the country’s foreign exchange potential).
Most of the public servants from ethnic groups aligned with the SPLM-IO (e.g., Nuer, Shilluk) have returned to their jobs, and continue to function.
However, the capacity of the public service has been eroded by irregular pay, which also increases the risk of corruption. Functionality has also been diminished by the large number of arbitrary decrees (e.g, the creation of 28 states, random appointments and firing of officials) issued by the President, disrupting bureaucratic processes. Power resides in the offices of ministers or of the President.
Nevertheless, the major sticking point to date in re-establishing national unity is that Riek Machar as the designated First Vice President has not yet taken up residence in Juba. His continued absence is becoming a factor of instability.
Machar has provided many rationalizations for his absence, but Owusu believes despite all the pretexts that Machar (and his wife Angelina Teny) is afraid for his life — and this is not just paranoia.
Owusu foresees that the next two to three weeks will be critical — if Machar does not establish residence in Juba, the current Salva Kiir faction in control of most of the levers of power may try to bypass him and appoint surrogates and announce the creation of a TGONU without him. Even if he returns, there will be much jockeying for appointments to positions in the government and public service.
Owusu’s prognostication is that Machar will in fact take up residence in Juba — but that the GRSS will continue to be dysfunctional and the fundamentals of the economy will remain weak.
The dire human rights situation in South Sudan
Shocking and horrific human rights violations have been committed against civilians by both sides, amply documented in the March 2016 report published on line by the UN Human Rights Office. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17207&LangID=E The main driver according to Owusu is impunity. No one is being held to account. There is no machinery to punish transgressors.
The suffering is greater than in almost any other theatre of conflict with which Owusu is familiar. Tens of thousands of South Sudanese have been killed, some two million displaced. 250,000 children are at risk. The education of children has been severely disrupted. About a million are out of school.
Despite efforts to end the conscription of child soldiers (including a recent visit by General Dallaire who talked ‘general to general’ with his local counterparts) the practice continues. There are an estimated 16,000 child soldiers in South Sudan, the majority enroled in the militia of the SPLM-IO.
Some 2.8 million people are malnourished, 25% of the population. 40,000 are on the brink of famine. Last year humanitarian agencies were able to reach 4.4 million people; this year the estimate is that 6.1 million will be in need of assistance, of which 4.1 million will be targeted for assistance (including 265,000 refugees from other countries and the possible return to their homes of several hundred thousand IDPs).
Prepositioning of food needs to be finished by May because of the rainy season, which makes roads impassable. The cost of moving supplies skyrockets from $400 per ton by land to $2600 by air.
The crisis has created a momentum of vulnerability with many interlocking facets: ethnic conflict, criminal violence, widespread hunger, unprecedented displacement of population. Contributing factors include harassment of aid workers, looting of supplies, extortion rackets at private pop-up artisanal checkpoints. The polarization in the society is shocking, extending down to the local community level. Transitional justice will be difficult since so many are implicated.
The $1.3 billion appeal for assistance to South Sudan for 2016 is only 9% funded. The appeal for the drought emergency in neighbouring Ethiopia is doing much better, probably because the government of Ethiopia has a much better image of competence and probity. Donors may find it distasteful to cooperate with the GRSS in Juba, but will continue to support it, because the failure to do so will be disastrous.
There is a danger, however, that South Sudan will become a ‘forgotten emergency’.
One possible avenue to garner more support is to attach a South Sudan side event to the World Humanitarian Summit scheduled for Istanbul 23-24 May 2016.
Owusu has spoken about this to Staffan de Mistura, UN Special Envoy for the Syrian crisis, who did not consider a separate South Sudanese event feasible, but thought there might be a way to bring some ‘voices’ from South Sudan to the Istanbul summit.
Owusu also proposed that after the formation of a TGONU, a joint visit by both leaders (Salva Kiir and Riek Machar) to international capitals could be considered.
Aubrey Morantz
ASG
Human Rights Council Meeting – Item 4: South Sudan
