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South Sudan’s Information Minister, Ateny Wek Ateny, has vowed that the country will hold its elections in December after years of delay and the country’s longstanding civil war.
“Elections must take place at the end of 2026, with no further extension,” Information Minister Ateny Wek Ateny told reporters in the capital, Juba.
The elections will be the country’s first since it broke away from Sudan and became a sovereign independent country in 2011.
South Sudan has been embroiled in a civil war since 2013, just two years after it gained independence from Sudan. The war began as a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar, before it spiralled into an ethnic rift and a crisis that has metamorphosed into a grave humanitarian crisis.
Kiir and Machar had signed a peace agreement in 2018, which ended the last civil war. The peace agreement has, however, collapsed, and the vice president is currently on trial and under house arrest.
Elections were supposed to be held in 2022 but were delayed to 2024, then to this year. According to Ateny, South Sudan is experiencing “relative peace”, except for “some pockets of insecurity” in eastern Jonglei state.
But the violence has not ceased. Tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes in South Sudan, with aid agencies frequently attacked and struggling to operate in the conflict-rife region.
