The government rejected the allegations, which were made in a confidential UN report. In the report, a panel of experts called for an arms embargo on South Sudan. In December last year, the UN Security Council rejected the calls for one. However, the United States did back the measure.
Ateny Wek Ateny, South Sudan’s presidential spokesman, said the report undermined sovereignty of South Sudan. He also said the South Sudan government had the right to buy weapons. He noted that the government have not purchased guns in about four years.
The UN report claims that South Sudan is spending oil revenue on weapons amid a time when South Sudan is heading into a famine that is partly caused of the president’s, Salva Kiir, military campaign.
Experts also claimed that weapons were still being brought into South Sudan from diverse sources and some neighboring countries are helping.
ANALYSIS: In the case of #SouthSudan, you can't fix the issue of #famine without addressing the ongoing civil war pic.twitter.com/w9aQi518ck
— IRIN News (@irinnews) March 20, 2017
As South Sudan allegedly spends more than half of its budget on weapons, thousands of people are dying. Experts say on top of that, there are 1.1 million that are near starvation and when July comes around, that number is expected to increase to 5.5 million if nothing is done about the food crisis.
The South Sudan government has been blocking access for humanitarian aid workers, which hasn’t made the food crisis any better. The famine has also been exacerbated by population displacement.
