Adama Dieng (left), the UN special advisor for prevention of genocide. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Kenya and Uganda are helping prolong the four-year-old civil war
in South Sudan by serving as conduits for arms to combatants, a United
Nations official said on Monday.
“The responsibility to
prevent atrocities is regional and international,” Adama Dieng, the UN
special advisor for prevention of genocide, told Voice of America.
“It is true that large quantities of weapons and ammunition are flowing into South Sudan through Kenya and Uganda.”
Mr
Dieng said peace will be achieved in South Sudan only “if we have
concerted regional and international efforts to leave no further options
to the South Sudanese leaders to stop and start negotiating.”
“International partners have to start targeting the accomplices,
intermediaries of the South Sudanese parties,” Mr Dieng declared.
“Welcoming refugees who are victims of a conflict they are de facto
facilitating is not good enough,” he added.
Uganda is hosting more than one million refugees from South Sudan, while Kenya’s Kakuma camp holds more than 100,000.
Mr
Dieng did not indicate whether the governments of Kenya and Uganda are
directly involved in arms trafficking to South Sudan. He also did not
say whether the weapons are intended for the country’s military or rebel
forces — or possibly both.
But a UN panel of experts
reported last November it had obtained “documentary evidence” of a cargo
flight containing 31 tonnes of weapons that arrived in Entebbe, Uganda,
in August.
Kampala-based Bosasy Logistics was listed
as consignee for this shipment, which was said to have originated in
Bulgaria. The arms were to be transferred to South Sudan, according to
unnamed sources cited by the UN experts. Uganda has openly sided with
the South Sudan government since the start of the civil war in December
2013.
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