Summary

In the most deadly spate of intercommunal violence since the end of the 21-year civil war in 2005, more than 1,000 men, women, and children were killed in attacks in Jonglei state in Southern Sudan in March and April 2009. The attacks starkly demonstrate the failure of both the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) and the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) to protect civilians from violence, in particular from intercommunal violence that appears to be intensifying.

The recent surge in violence prompted UN officials to observe that in 2009 so far the death toll in Southern Sudan has been higher than in Darfur and to warn of its potential impact on elections scheduled in February 2010 and the referendum on southern self-determination in 2011.[1] Both are politically contentious milestones in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the National Congress Party-led Government of Sudan and the Southern People’s Liberation Army/Movement that could fuel local and national tensions and lead to further violence and human rights violations.

This report, based on Human Rights Watch’s research in Southern Sudan in March and April 2009, documents the fighting in Jonglei between two ethnic groups and the failure of both the GoSS and UNMIS to protect civilians. Gaps in civilian protection are not unique to Jonglei. In Upper Nile state, 72 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in May 2009.[2] In Central and Western Equatoria, civilians received little or no protection from Lord’s Resistance Army rebels from Uganda, who continued to attack and kill southerners with impunity in 2009,[3] while civilians in Malakal received little protection from abuses by soldiers in the Sudan Armed Forces and Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) who killed more than 30 civilians during and after military clashes in February 2009.[4]

In this increasingly violent environment the GoSS lacks the tools to protect civilians.[5] The Southern Sudanese Police Service (SSPS) is not sufficiently deployed and lacks training and equipment to intervene in large-scale armed conflict. The SPLA, though more robustly deployed than police, is also untrained to handle the violence and appears to have adopted a policy of not intervening in intercommunal fighting. UNMIS—mandated to monitor the CPA’s ceasefire provisions and protect civilians—has only just begun to act on its civilian protection mandate some four years after its deployment.

The GoSS should immediately take steps to improve security and protect civilians from violence, including intercommunal fighting, by recruiting, training, and deploying more police especially to potential hotspots, and by training soldiers to protect civilians through targeted interventions and taking on other civilian policing functions when necessary.

A high-level conference on the implementation of the CPA, hosted by the Office of the US Special Envoy for Sudan on June 23, 2009, provides all stakeholders with the opportunity to address gaps in human rights and civilian protection for southerners. The UN and international donors should pledge to support GoSS efforts to improve security and civilian protection, and press UNMIS to increase its protection activities including patrolling and other preventive engagement in all potential conflict areas in Southern Sudan.

Research for this report included interviews with more than 50 victims and witnesses of attacks on Pibor county, dozens of officials in the Government of Southern Sudan and in the Jonglei state government, and staff of UN and other international organizations that work in Jonglei.