South Sudan set to face 'make or break' year in 2023, UN warns

The provisional government of violence-plagued South Sudan, the world's youngest state, must implement a peace agreement to hold "credible" elections in 2024, the UN envoy to the country said on Monday.

"We see 2023 as a 'make or break' year and as a test for all parties to the peace agreement," Nicholas Haysom, the United Nations envoy to South Sudan, told the UN Security Council.

The South African diplomat applauded the transitional government's "commitment to implement the peace agreement in accordance with the timelines" in a roadmap set out by the sides vying for control of the country, which came into existence in 2011 with the partition of Sudan.

Haysom stressed that Juba had "stated clearly that there would be no more extensions of the timelines" for elections at the end of 2024, which he said needed to be "inclusive and credible."

The UN mission to South Sudan - one of the most expensive in the world with an annual budget of $1.2 billion - has been asked by the government to "assist the South Sudanese-owned and administered elections," Haysom said, in particular by "working with civil society, political parties, and the media."

After the end of a five-year civil war in 2018 that claimed at least 380,000 lives, President Salva Kiir and his rival Riek Machar formed a transitional government and agreed to join forces in a single army to protect the population, hard hit by conflicts and climatic disasters.

However, armed violence continues in the oil-rich country where the majority of people live below the poverty line.

Haysom acknowledged there are still conflicts that "increasingly present an ethnic or tribal dimension, and, as President Kiir noted... threaten to unravel hard-won peace gains."

At Haysom's side was a US representative to the UN, Robert Wood, who said he was "gravely alarmed over the rise of violence against civilians in South Sudan".

He cited figures showing that killings of civilian increased by 79 percent, while the number of civilians harmed increased by 87 percent compared to last year.

Abductions of women and children rose by 464 percent and conflict-related sexual violence jumped by 360 percent, he added.