UN pledges to prevent ‘another Rwanda’

WASHINGTON/JUBA: Secretary of State John Kerry is bringing his two main tools of diplomacy — peace talks and threatened sanctions — to Africa this week to try to find a way to end months of killing that is threatening to rip apart South Sudan, the world’s newest nation.
It’s not yet clear whether the US will impose the sanctions while Kerry is in South Sudan, which he said he planned to visit during a week of stops that also include Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola.
US officials are still trying to persuade three of South Sudan’s immediate neighbors to issue similar penalties against people on both sides of the brutal fighting.
Kerry arrives in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on Wednesday. Top UN’s rights officials vowed Wednesday to do everything in their power to prevent conflict-wracked South Sudan from sliding into genocide, and warned the warring factions they would be held responsible if famine breaks out.
Firing off a damning attack against South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said she was “appalled by the apparent lack of concern about the risk of famine displayed by both leaders.”
The comments came after Pillay, accompanied by a special genocide envoy, held talks with the rival leaders, and a day after the UN made a desperate appeal for a one-month truce to avert a famine and humanitarian disaster.
“To the survivors of the genocide, we owe a pledge to take all possible measures within our power to protect populations from another Rwanda, there is no excuse for inaction,” UN envoy for the prevention of genocide Adama Dieng told reporters.
“It is clear that the conflict has taken a dangerous trajectory, and civilians are being deliberately targeted based on their ethnicity and perceived political affiliation,” he said in a joint news conference with Pillay.
The four-month-old civil war in South Sudan, which only won independence from Sudan in 2011, has already left thousands of people dead, and possibly tens of thousands, with at least 1.2 million people forced to flee their homes.