International News
The World Food Programme and the United Nations Children’s Fund say that as drought worsens in Madagascar, malnutrition rates are expected to quadruple among children in the South, where at least half a million under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished, including 110,000 in severe condition.
Despite progress made towards accountability and political stability, the senior United Nations official in South Sudan told the Security Council today that significant security and humanitarian challenges remain, as members diverged on the utility of sanctions still imposed on the world’s youngest country.
Sudan must now fully seize its critical role in delivering long-awaited justice to victims by ending impunity for perpetrators of atrocity crimes committed in Darfur almost 20 years ago, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court told the Security Council today.
The Security Council, acting through its written silence procedure today, renewed the arms embargo, travel ban and assets freeze imposed on South Sudan for another year and extended for 13 months the mandate of the panel of experts tasked with helping to oversee those measures, while expressing its readiness to adjust them in light of conditions on the ground.
The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) until 15 November 2021, maintaining the current ceilings for troops and police.
The Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, in connection with the examination of the third report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict in South Sudan (S/2020/1205), agreed to convey the following messages through a public statement by the Chair of the Working Group.
Owing to the liquidity crisis and the current COVID-19 pandemic impacting our Organization, only a partial summary of today’s meeting of the Security Council on Sudan and South Sudan is available at this time. The complete summary will be issued later as Press Release SC/14505.
Extending the mandate of the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS) until 15 March 2022, the Security Council demanded today that all parties to the conflict in that country and other armed actors immediately stop fighting and engage in political dialogue, in accordance with the peace agreement signed in 2018.
The transformation of South Sudan from conflict to recovery is under way, the senior United Nations official in the country told the Security Council today, as he urged the Transitional Government to build on hard-won gains made during its first year in office and accelerate implementation of the 2018 Revitalized Peace Agreement — or otherwise risk a return to widespread violence.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced today the appointment of Nicholas Haysom of South Africa as his Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).