U.N. Finds South Sudan Increasingly in Turmoil

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/world/africa/un-finds-south-sudan-increasingly-in-turmoil.html

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GENEVA — The murderous struggle between the government and opposition forces in South Sudan has already resulted in widespread atrocities and left thousands of people on the brink of starvation, yet in the past year, both sides intensified and spread the conflict, the United Nations said Thursday.

A 45-page report produced jointly by the organization’s mission in South Sudan and its human rights office in Geneva said that most of the violence was committed by the army loyal to President Salva Kiir and opposition forces under Riek Machar, the vice president whom Mr. Kiir dismissed in 2013, touching off the civil war.

“The scale, intensity and severity of human rights violations and abuses have increased with the continuation of the hostilities,” the report said, citing large-scale killings, attacks that have singled out and killed children and an “unprecedented level” of sexual violence, including gang rape and sexual slavery.

The United Nations said it had documented cases in which at least 250 women and girls had been victims of sexual violence last year, and some of them were killed after being raped.

Investigators also collected testimony of sexual violence on an even larger scale that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Citing witness accounts, the report said that government forces and associated militias attacked and killed women and girls in large numbers.

According to the witnesses, the soldiers gang-raped their victims before burning them alive in their homes.

“If you look them in the face when they are doing it, they will kill you,” one survivor reported.

In parts of one northern state, the United Nations mission estimated that 1,000 civilians were killed, 1,300 women and girls raped, and 1,600 women and children abducted over the six months between April and September.

International aid agencies report more that than 2.2 million people have fled their homes over the past two years, including some 600,000 who have sought refuge in neighboring countries. Last year, according to the report, a new pattern of violence emerged in which government forces adopted scorched-earth tactics, burning entire villages, killing their inhabitants, destroying crops and looting livestock.

In the first year of the civil war, fighting was largely limited to three northern and eastern states, but in the last year it spread to the south, the United Nations said. Moreover, while the conflict was fought initially between Nuer and Dinka ethnic communities aligned with the rival leaders, a wider array of armed groups and communities have been drawn into the increasingly lethal violence.

Both sides in the war committed in 2014 to end recruitment of child soldiers; the United Nations reported some progress with the release of 1,755 boys by one armed group last year, but by the end of the year it estimated that between 13,000 and 15,000 child soldiers were being used by both sides for duties that ranged from manning checkpoints to acting as bodyguards for commanders.

Another disturbing feature of the conflict, the United Nations said, was the warring parties’ total disregard for any traditionally safe places including hospitals, religious institutions and areas where people fleeing the fighting had assembled.

Six sites protected by United Nations peacekeepers were no exception. Government soldiers and affiliated militias in particular attacked and harassed civilians moving in and out of the centers, abducting or killing them, raping some women and looting, the United Nations reported.

At least 39 people were killed in the vicinity of one of the sites at Bentiu between January and October, the report said.

The conflict has been dangerous for United Nations personnel as well.

Thirty-four staff members have been killed since December 2013, along with three South Sudanese nationals affiliated with the United Nations and one contractor.