A weapons monitoring group has indicted Uganda of violating a European Union arms embargo to South Sudan.
According to the British-based group, Conflict Armament Research (CAR), Uganda sidestepped the embargo and smuggled arms and ammunition to the East African country at the height of its civil war.
South Sudan’s civil war broke out in December 2013 when troops loyal to then-Vice President Riek Machar clashed with forces loyal to President Salva Kiir.
The civil war erupted two years after South Sudan gained independence in 2011 from Sudan following decades of bloodshed.
Since 1994, the European Union has maintained an arms embargo on Sudan. It extended the ban to cover South Sudan when it split from Sudan seven years ago.
What Uganda did
Uganda took delivery of the weapons in 2014 and 2015. It subsequently transferred them to South Sudan, CAR said in a report spanning four years of research.
It said on Thursday that South Sudan arranged for Uganda to provide end-user assurances for the purchase of the arsenals from Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia.
Reuters quoted James Bevan, head of CAR as saying that “We have a paper trail from point of manufacture, through export to Uganda, through diversion to South Sudan, and to the recovery of the weapons on the battlefield.”
Uganda openly provided arms and troops in support of the South Sudanese military in the civil war. But the latest role, where it circumvented the EU arms embargo to transfer these weapons has not previously been documented in such detail, Bevan said to Reuters.
Impact of civil war
Millions of South Sudanese have been displaced by the war and thousands killed.
Over 50,000 people have been killed and more than 1.6 million internally displaced with more a quarter of a million children severely malnourished and at imminent risk of death.
Again, over 19,000 children have been recruited into the conflict. At least one in three schools has been damaged, destroyed, occupied or closed with more than 1,200 cases of sexual violence against children documented.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir signed a peace deal with rebel factions in September this year. A previous peace deal signed in 2015 fell apart a year later after clashes broke out between government forces and rebels.
Source: Africafeeds.com
