South Sudan calls for end to UN arms embargo after partial deployment of forces

JUBA – South Sudan has appealed to the UN Security Council to lift the current arms embargo, citing the recent deployment of an unarmed contingent of 750 soldiers from the Necessary Unified Forces (NUF) Tonja area of Upper Nile state.

Speaking to journalists following a cabinet meeting in Juba on Friday, information minister Michael Makuei Lueth said peace forces were deployed without arms, blaming the UN arms embargo first imposed in 2018.

“We are deploying them without arms because we have no arms. The UN Security Council decided to pass a resolution on the arms embargo on South Sudan, so we are unable to acquire arms for our forces,” Makuei said.

“It is the international community that insisted and said that you must deploy these forces; we have been saying we cannot deploy them without arms,” he said.

Makuei stated that the forces trained in Upper Nile would be transported to Juba for integration with other forces from Bahr el-Ghazal.

He urged the international community and the UN Security Council to lift the arms embargo, allowing them to arm the unified forces.

In August of last year, South Sudan’s unity government graduated the first batch of 53,000 unified forces.

The 2018 revitalized peace agreement, signed to end years of conflict that began in December 2013, calls for the graduation and deployment of a total of 83,000 unified forces.