(Xinhuanet 08/23/17)
As the people fleeing the South Sudan crisis continue to enter neighboring Uganda, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said a political solution is urgently needed to resolve the crisis. Peter Maurer who visited South Sudan and Uganda told reporters here on Monday that the solution to the crisis is political rather than military. He urged Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to use his regional influence to push the rival parties to stop the fighting. "I am deeply convinced that some of the structural and systematic problems with which we are confronting can be found if the neighbors and together with the parties in South Sudan play an important role in a peaceful solution," Maurer said...
(Xinhuanet 08/23/17)
China is dedicated to enhancing its cooperation with Africa in human resource development through knowledge and technology transfer, a Chinese diplomat said Tuesday. Liu Tao, Charge d'Affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Ethiopia, made the remarks at the Chinese Government Training Program Fellowship Reception in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. He said China, since the year 2000, has sent over 2,000 agricultural experts and over 7,000 medical personnel to Africa, and has trained more than 80,000 Africans from more than 50 countries. China has pledged that it would, in three years, train 200,000 technicians and provide 40,000 training opportunities in China, and will offer 30,000 government scholarships, he said. Stating that 1,100 Ethiopian candidates are invited this year to attend short-term...
(Sudan Tribune 08/22/17)
The Government of South Sudan should undertake measures to allow the free movement of all United Nations staff, vehicles, and planes without any restrictions in all parts of South Sudan, an armed opposition official remarked on Monday. “That immunity of all UN staff must be respected by the government,” General Wesley Welebe Samson, the deputy chief of staff for training said in a statement extended to Sudan Tribune. According to the official, since the deployment of UN peacekeepers in the country, there have been continued violations to the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), such as abductions of UN personnel
(APA 08/22/17)
South Sudan refuses UN-approved Regional Protection Forces deployment to capital's airport, reports said on Tuesday. South Sudan and the United Nations mission in the country are at odds, the government saying the mandate giving the Regional Protection Forces (RPF) control of its main airport was a breach of national sovereignty. The first batch of RPF troops arrived in the capital Juba two weeks ago. In August 2016, the UN Security Council had approved a request formulated by the East African regional bloc and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), for the deployment of a 4,000-strong protection force to secure Juba and protect other key installations in the war-torn nation after the government and rebel forces resumed fighting in July 2016...
(Xinhuanet 08/22/17)
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said Monday his country would give continued support for South Sudan's peace and stability. Desalegn made the remarks while holding talks with South Sudan's Petroleum Minister Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth on ways of ensuring peace and security in South Sudan in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. He also urged the South Sudanese government to work towards a full restoration of peace and stability in the country and solve the nation's problems in a more inclusive manner, Ethiopia's state news agency reported. Desalegn also stressed the need to install comprehensive public participation as a crucial impetus to build political solution to the ongoing crisis in the world's youngest nation. Ethiopia and South Sudan have earlier this year signed...
(APA 08/22/17)
The European Union (EU) department for humanitarian aid and civil protection said it is doubling funding to International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to support South Sudanese refugees in the Ugandan districts of Yumbe and Moyo. The increase in funding from one to two million Euros comes hot on the heels of an announcement by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kampala that the number of displaced persons from South Sudan has surpassed the one million mark. The donation, according to a statement, will be channeled through IOM and its partner organisation, Lutheran World Federation (LWF). Initially, the EU Directorate General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) had pledged Euros 1million for water and sanitation...
(Voice of America 08/22/17)
The warring factions in South Sudan and the country’s neighbors must leave no stone unturned in finding a political solution to the three-and-a-half-year civil war. That was the message of the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as he wrapped up his visit to South Sudan and neighboring Uganda. Peter Maurer has visited conflict zones around the world, including Syria and Yemen. The International Committee of the Red Cross president paints a grim picture of what he has just seen in South Sudan, one in two people is severely hungry and dependent on food aid, while one in three people is displaced. ICRC’s Maurer said returning to dialogue is the only solution. “I have seen the alternative...
(APA 08/22/17)
It was August 19, 1955 and a number of soldiers in Sudan were being rounded up for allegedly conspiring to launch an armed mutiny against the authorities in Khartoum. However, instead of surrendering a unit based in the town of Torit, in today’s Equatoria State in the east of present day South Sudan made up exclusively of southerners resisted, firing shots at their counterparts of the Sudanese army before disappearing into the bush with their weapons. With that sudden act of defiance, the first shots in South Sudan’s long struggle against domination by Khartoum were fired. In the intervening days, more southerners in the army mainly officers, warrant officers and a small band of non-commissioned officers mutinied in the cities...
(Sudan Tribune 08/22/17)
South Sudanese government said on Monday it declined to dispatch a team to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for an African Union-brokered meeting on the disputed area of Abyei, citing the lack of clear agenda. The African Union High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) called on the Sudanese and South Sudanese members of the Abyei Joint Oversight Committee (AJOC) for a meeting on 16 August. Also, another meeting for the traditional leaders from the Ngok-Dinka and Misseriya communities had to take place on 17 August. A delegation from the from the African Union, United Nations and the UN Security Council was in Khartoum on 10 August to discuss the need for an agreement on Abyei joint administration and the implementation of the joint border...
(Xinhuanet 08/22/17)
African officials on Monday called for urgent infrastructural development and regional integration to boost the continent's economy. At the Infrastructure Africa 2017 in Johannesburg, Zambian Minister of Finance Felix Mutati encouraged Africans to speedily address infrastructural deficit. "We have to inject some sense of urgency in ourselves. If we remain captured by business as usual, we are headed for disaster," said Mutati at the opening ceremony of the two-day event. "Competitiveness in Africa is being constrained by infrastructure deficit. We need about 93 billion U.S. dollars every year to address the infrastructure gap in the continent. We need to urgently implement projects," he said. Mutati said Africa has to narrow focus to innovative financing and design, better use of existing...
(AFP (eng) 08/21/17)
The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross warned Monday that South Sudan's inability to pay civil servants risked worsening a humanitarian crisis and urged donors to step in. ICRC chief Peter Maurer was in Kampala after a three-day visit to conflict-torn South Sudan, where he warned of a "spiral which no international actor can prevent" as civil servants working in critical sectors such as health and water services go unpaid. Maurer said he had "rarely seen another conflict in the world where the fighting and the economic fragility -- the inability of the state to pay salaries -- has had so much humanitarian impact." He called for the international community and national actors "to use every resource...
(Sudan Tribune 08/21/17)
South Sudan President Salva Kiir on Sunday warned that his government could reconsider its decision on the deployment of regional protection forces mandated by the United Nations Security Council. “They [regional protection forces] have come and the way they have started is already becoming a matter of concern. They want to deploy at the airport. They also want whatever they bring into the country not to be checked,” warned the South Sudanese leader. In August 2016, the UN Security Council, following a request by the East African regional bloc (IGAD), approved the deployment of a 4,000-strong protection force to secure Juba in the aftermath of renewed clashes that occurred in the capital in July. South Sudan’s Transitional Government of National...
(Xinhuanet 08/21/17)
South Sudan has threatened to stop all planes operated by the UN peacekeeping mission (UNMISS) from taking to the skies following a dispute over security clearance. Government spokesman Michael Makuei said late Sunday that UNMISS has failed to follow a government directive introduced last year that requires organizations to get flight clearance 72 hours before travel. Makuei said that the UN mission over the weekend operated flights without notifying the government, as such they have suspended cooperation with UNMISS until the matter is solved. ''We established a one-stop shop for the coordination of all UNMISS flights. Now they decided to move against this establishment and after being prevented they went to the air and said the government of South Sudan...
(News24 08/21/17)
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross says South Sudan's civil war presents humanitarians with "one of the unique crises" in the world. Peter Maurer said on Monday that "uncomfortable elements of poverty" are making life even harder for millions of people already displaced by war. Maurer said "the inability of the state to pay salaries has had so much impact" on the conflict. He said ICRC operations in South Sudan have been displaced several times over the last three years, forcing the aid group to abandon relief facilities amid fighting. Maurer visited parts of South Sudan last week and later toured some refugee camps in neighboring Uganda, which is struggling to keep up with more than...
(Sudan Tribune 08/21/17)
An outbreak of malaria in South Sudan has killed over 4,000 people since February, a senior health official disclosed last week. “This year’s malaria is the most severe the country has ever seen,” Dr. Isaac Mapeer, the deputy head of Malaria Control Program at South Sudan’s Ministry of Health, told Anadolu Agency on Thursday. A total of over 900,000 malaria cases had so far been registered, according to Mapeer. “4,073 deaths were recorded since February, while 2,000 deaths were reported in 2016”, he stressed. Malaria is described as is a life-threatening mosquito-borne blood disease caused by a Plasmodium parasite, which is usually transmitted to humans through the bite of the Anopheles mosquito. Once an infected mosquito bites a human, the...
(Bloomberg 08/21/17)
GreenWish Partners, a renewable energy company run by a former Morgan Stanley executive, is planning to invest $800 million on solar-powered telecommunications towers across Africa. The project could fuel economic growth by providing power for essential services. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest rates of energy access in the world and is home to about half of the world’s 1.2 billion people without reliable electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. The problem extends to businesses as well as households, cutting into productivity and growth. “We reduce the total cost of power by 30 percent,” said Charlotte Aubin-Kalaidjian, the founder and chief executive officer of GreenWish, who was formerly a managing director at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. “Smaller towers can run...
(AfricaNews 08/18/17)
Hailemariam Desalegn, the Ethiopian Prime Minister has identified poverty as the main underlying factor of instability in the Horn of Africa region. He added that economic integration was a sure means to secure the region. The 52-year-old Premier who just ended a three-day official visit to Sudan was addressing Khartoum-based diplomatic community and Sudanese intellectuals. His research paper titled: ‘Horn of Africa: Possibilities of an Economic Community,’ stressed the need for the region despite its security challenges to build global competitiveness via economic integration. The time is now for Africans to play their role by filling the market gap observed at the global level. “The time is now for Africans to play their role by filling the market gap observed...
(AFP (eng) 08/17/17)
South Sudan's brutal civil war has forced more than one million people to flee to neighbouring Uganda alone, with another million seeking refuge elsewhere in the region, the UN's refugee agency said Thursday. The UNHCR said additional funds were desperately needed to help the refugees flooding into Uganda, adding that most were women and children fleeing "barbaric violence". Over the past year, an average of 1,800 South Sudanese have arrived in Uganda every single day, it said. South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, descended into civil war in December 2013, just two years after it split from the north. Thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced by the violence, which briefly plunged part of the country into famine...
(Reuters (Eng) 08/17/17)
The number of South Sudanese refugees in Uganda hit one million on Thursday, the United Nations said, as hundreds of desperate families pour across the border every day seeking a haven from the civil war. The conflict in South Sudan has created Africa's biggest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and U.N. agencies are receiving a fraction of the cash they need to provide food and shelter. But the crowds keep flowing across rickety wooden bridges near the northwestern Ugandan border town of Busia, staggering under the weight of babies and a few pots or bundles of clothing balanced on their heads. Women and children make up more than 85 percent of the arrivals. "Two weeks ago my husband's...
(Xinhuanet 08/17/17)
Chinese companies and medical team members operating in Sierra Leone on Wednesday donated 200,000 U.S. dollars in cash as well as other materials towards the efforts of the government in trying to support people affected by the flood and mudslide disaster. The disaster, which struck the outskirts of the West African nation's capital city Freetown on Monday buried hundreds of Sierra Leoneans in various communities, including Regent, Mount Sugar-Loaf, Kamayama, Kaningo and Dworzark, among others. The incident, apparently the worst of its kind in the country's history, also left thousands of people homeless across the city of Freetown. Speaking during the donation ceremony, charge d'affaires at the Chinese Embassy Wang Xinmin said the people of China are with Sierra Leone...