Updated by Faith Barbara N Ruhinda at 1436 EAT on Friday 27 February 2026

A United Nations investigative body has warned that South Sudan risks “a return to full-scale war” unless urgent steps are taken to end entrenched impunity and widespread abuses amid escalating violence in the world’s youngest country.

A report by the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan (CHRSS), released on Friday during a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, found that civilians are enduring severe violations, including killings, “systematic” sexual violence, arbitrary detention, forced displacement and deprivation, as the country sinks deeper into a humanitarian crisis.

The commission warned that “escalating atrocity risks” and the erosion of political safeguards in South Sudan make “urgent preventive action” essential. It urged regional and international actors to step up diplomatic pressure, apply targeted sanctions and strictly enforce the UN arms embargo until measurable progress is made on human rights and accountability.

“Preventing further mass atrocity crimes, institutional collapse and the unraveling of South Sudan’s fragile transition demands urgent, coordinated national, regional and intern

ational re-engagement,” the report said.
Based on a year-long investigation and witness testimony, the report faulted political and military elites for placing the country’s peace framework under mounting strain. It cited the detention of opposition figures, the weakening of power-sharing arrangements and efforts to revise the 2018 peace deal as key factors fueling instability.

The commission said the arrest and removal from office of First Vice President Riek Machar last year — followed by his prosecution on charges of murder, treason and crimes against humanity — had weakened “the core power-sharing guarantees” of the 2018 peace agreement.

It warned the developments had sparked “political uncertainty and armed clashes on a scale not witnessed” in a decade.
Machar, an ethnic Nuer, was suspended as South Sudan’s second-in-command after opposition Nuer White Army fighters overran a military garrison in Nasir.

Civil war first erupted in South Sudan in 2013, just two years after the country gained independence from Sudan, when President Salva Kiir — a member of the majority Dinka ethnic group — dismissed Machar as vice president, accusing him of plotting a coup.

The report further warned that intensifying military operations have been marked by a “dangerous shift in tactics”, including air strikes on civilian-populated areas.

It said the deployment of troops from neighbouring Uganda — a guarantor of the 2018 peace deal — had “materially strengthened” government forces and “raised credible concerns” about possible breaches of the UN arms embargo.

The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan (CHRSS) also reported that joint aerial bombardments by Ugandan and South Sudanese forces had struck civilian areas, “predominantly affecting [ethnic] Nuer communities in opposition-affiliated areas.”

Conflict-related sexual violence remains a “defining and persistent feature” of the crisis, the report found, with survivor testimony over the past decade revealing “widespread and systematic patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence perpetrated by all armed forces and groups”.

Most women and girls live “at constant risk of sexual violence,” it said, adding that last year the threat again “functioned as a strategic instrument of conflict deployed to terrorise civilian populations, drive displacement and fracture social cohesion”.

The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said impunity remains deeply entrenched, with senior commanders and political actors rarely held accountable for serious abuses committed by forces under their command.

The report also documented a sharp deterioration in civic space, with journalists, activists and opposition figures facing harassment, surveillance and arbitrary detention — trends that undermine prospects for inclusive political participation and long-term stability.

The commission urged the government to immediately halt violations by its forces, release those arbitrarily detained and guarantee freedoms of expression, assembly and association.

Source: Aljazeera

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