The UN Security Council extended a weapons embargo against South Sudan and slapped penalties on certain persons living there, according to the country’s foreign ministry.
All parties were advised to “avoid a relapse into widespread conflict” as the resolution that the United States wrote was passed on Tuesday. The embargo on the sale of weapons has been renewed by the Security Council until May 31, 2024.
Five years after a peace agreement to terminate a civil war that claimed almost 400,000 lives, South Sudan is still plagued by armed warfare and political unrest.
“The UNSC Resolution… is deplorable,” the foreign ministry in Juba said in a statement late Wednesday.
“It has not taken into account the significant strides that the Government has made” in advancing development and implementing the peace deal, it added.
With 10 votes in favor and 5 members abstaining (China, Russia, Ghana, Gabon, and Mozambique), the resolution was approved.
The three African nations said that the sanctions were ineffective and did not take into account the advancements South Sudan, according to them, had made. For their assistance in this “unfair vote,” South Sudan expressed its “profound gratitude to the friendly governments.”
The political, security, economic, and humanitarian crises in the majority of the country were being prolonged by the continuous escalation of violence, the Security Council expressed worry.
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, but since then it has lurched from crisis to crisis, facing ongoing armed conflict, severe starvation, and natural disasters.
South Sudan experienced a civil conflict from 2013 and 2018 that between forces loyal to Salva Kiir, the current president, and Riek Machar, who took over as vice president.
A peace agreement in 2018 stopped serious fighting between their forces, but the young, underdeveloped nation is still suffering horrendously as a result of armed conflict.
More than two million people, according to the UN agency for refugees, are internally displaced.
