The world’s most backward country is delaying elections by two years. Despite having large oil reserves, South Sudan ranks dead last on the Human Development Index, due to its backwardness on health, education, and standard of living. South Sudan became independent of Sudan in 2011, and soon was consumed by a civil war that lasted from 2013 to 2020. Freedom House rates the country as “unfree,” at the bottom in terms of political rights and civil liberties. The civil war “stifled ordinary politics and created a climate of fear,” it says, while political elites “have presided over rampant corruption, economic collapse, and atrocities against civilians, journalists, and aid workers.”
Al Jazeera reports:
South Sudan’s government has announced it is postponing long-delayed general elections until December 2026, citing a lack of preparedness. This is the second time the country, which gained independence in 2011, is postponing elections and extending a transitional period that started in February 2020. President Salva Kiir and his former rival turned deputy, Riek Machar, signed a peace agreement in 2018 that ended a five-year civil war which killed an estimated 400,000 people, triggered a famine and led to a massive refugee crisis.
“The presidency, under the chairmanship of President Salva Kiir Mayardit, has announced an extension of the country’s transitional period by two years as well as postponing elections, which were initially scheduled for December 2024 to December 22nd, 2026,” Kiir’s office said on Friday. The government said it needed more time to complete processes such as a census, the drafting of a permanent constitution and the registration of political parties before an election could be held….
The country is going through an economic crisis that has seen civil servants go unpaid for almost one year, after its oil exports were affected by a damaged pipeline amid the civil war in neighbouring Sudan through which it exports….
A new security act that allows for warrantless detentions became law in August despite concerns from human rights groups that it would create a climate of fear in the run-up to the elections…..An estimated 9 million people – 73 percent of the country’s population – are in need of humanitarian assistance this year, according to the United Nations.
South Sudan’s northern neighbor, Sudan, is currently experiencing an incredibly destructive civil war that began last year. That civil war has caused a famine that may kill six million people in Sudan.
In the years immediately after South Sudan seceded from Sudan, its secession seemed like a dumb idea, because Sudan’s economy was growing, while South Sudan was experiencing sheer misery due to its own civil war from 2013 to 2020, a bloody war in which South Sudan’s military massacred members of minority ethnic groups such as the Nuer, the Shilluk, the Moru, the Dongotonu, the Kuku, the Lotuko, and the Avukaya. The military faced a rebellion by members of South Sudan’s second largest ethnic group, the Nuer. Nuer militiamen killed members of South Sudan’s most populous ethnic group, the Dinka, who dominate its government.
South Sudan was created as a country due to pressure from the United States. “Under international pressure and in expectation of sanctions relief from the United States,” Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir allowed South Sudan to hold a referendum on whether to leave Sudan and become independent. “Secession won overwhelming support in the referendum that followed, leading to independence for South Sudan in 2011.”
But by 2013, South Sudan’s dictatorial president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, claimed that his Vice President Riek Machar had attempted a coup (the president is a member of the Dinka ethnic group, while the vice president is a member of the Nuer ethnic group). Vice President “Machar denied the charge and fled; soon fighting erupted between competing factions…Several abortive ceasefires followed,” until the civil war finally ended in 2020.
