Kenya yesterday voted to endorse United Nation Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2625 (2022), which extends the mandate of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) for one year until March 15, 2023.
Under this mandate, UNMISS will continue to advance the three-year strategic vision for preventing a return to civil war in South Sudan, establishing long-term peace at the local and national levels and promoting inclusive and accountable governance as well as free, fair and peaceful elections.
It will also provide technical assistance, capacity building, and logistical support to strengthen civilian protection, the Revitalised Agreement and the peace process, as well as monitoring, investigating and reporting on violations of IHL and human rights.
The Council also called for strengthening the Mission’s sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response activities.
Members demanded that all parties immediately cease all forms of violence, human rights violations and abuses — including rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence — and called upon the Government of South Sudan to hold those responsible to account.
According to the document, the Council also urged the government and other relevant actors to complete a number of tasks before the current UNMISS mandate expires.
They include providing security to re-designated civilian-protection sites, initiating and overseeing a permanent constitution-making process, accelerating progress in preparations for free and fair elections, removing all obstacles to UNMISS, graduating necessary unified forces and progressing toward the establishment of the South Sudan Hybrid Court, as well as the Commission for Truth, Reconciliation, and Healing and the Compensation and Reparation Commission.
As Council members explained their positions, the representative of the United States, who facilitated the resolution’s drafting, stated that the renewed mandate reinforces UNMISS’ core mission and calls on it to strengthen its sexual and gender-based violence response activities, as well as its electoral support to the Government of South Sudan.
While Ghana’s representative welcomed the adoption, he expressed disappointment that the resolution did not take into account the views of some delegations.
She expressed concern about the use of the term “human rights defenders” in operative paragraph 3(b), claiming that it is neither clearly defined nor universally agreed upon.
Ghana, she said, would have preferred the term “human rights activists” instead.