South Sudan's Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel attends the burial of the slain commander of the South Sudan People’s Defense Force (SSPDF), Lt. Gen. David Majur Dak, in Juba, on March 19.Samir Bol/Reuters
A corrupt elite of predatory officials has looted billions of dollars from South Sudan’s oil revenue, while abandoning the country’s basic health and education services to the whims of foreign donors, a United Nations report says.
Since its independence in 2011, South Sudan has received more than US$23-billion in oil revenue and US$27-billion in foreign aid from countries such as Canada, but it remains one of the world’s poorest countries, with its economy collapsing and three-quarters of its population in need of emergency aid, the UN investigators found.
Canada alone has provided more than $1.1-billion in aid to South Sudan since 2011, according to federal data. But the world’s newest country is still heavily dependent on foreign assistance for its 12 million people because its government has walked away from “even its most essential duties,” the UN report says.
“The country has been captured by a predatory elite that has institutionalized the systematic looting of the nation’s wealth for private gain,” said the 101-page report by the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan.
“This has entrenched widespread deprivation among the general population, who live in conditions of extreme poverty and food insecurity, with minimal access to essential government services,” it said.
“This abandonment of duty has left the population at the mercy of volatile and insufficient humanitarian aid. Grand-scale corruption is not incidental, keeping South Sudan in turmoil, it is the engine of South Sudan’s crisis, fuelling state collapse, institutional paralysis and human misery.”
Trump-backed peace plan in Sudan faces opposition from army-controlled government
Armed group makes plea for help after landslide wipes out Sudan village, kills 1,000
The corruption is directly fuelling conflict in South Sudan and heightening the risk of a slide into full-scale civil war, similar to the war from 2013 to 2018 that devastated the country and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, the UN report said.
Fears of renewed war have soared in recent days after the government filed charges of murder and treason against its first vice-president, Riek Machar, who leads the largest opposition movement in the government’s national unity coalition.
The opposition responded by declaring an end to the 2018 peace agreement. It called on its supporters, including soldiers, to use “all means available” to bring about “regime change” in the country. Violent clashes have already erupted in some regions of the country over the past several months.
South Sudan President Salva Kiir, who has never held an election in the 14 years since the country’s independence, is widely believed to be orchestrating a presidential succession by his ally, second vice-president Benjamin Bol Mel, a powerful businessman who is under U.S. sanctions for alleged corruption.
According to the UN report, the government has funnelled an estimated US$2.2-billion in oil revenue to companies controlled by Mr. Bol Mel since 2021. The money was purportedly intended for road construction, but only a few roads were built and most of the money became an “off-budget fund” for the benefit of Mr. Bol Mel and other political elites, the report said.
Another company, Crawford Capital Ltd., owned by members of the political elite, has profited by collecting a lucrative percentage of fees for the government’s digital services, including visa fees, health certificates and tax payments, the UN investigators found.
Meanwhile, hunger and famine have spread across the country, and GDP per capita has collapsed to just one-quarter of what it was when the country became independent. “Civil servants remain underpaid, and often unpaid, and little if any money is reaching core services,” the report said.
Government spending on health, education and humanitarian assistance is minimal, it said. It found that the official “medical unit” in Mr. Kiir’s office spent as much as the entire Ministry of Health last year, while public access to health care is so limited that 10 per cent of children die in infancy.
By diverting its revenue away from essential public services and into the pockets of the political elite, South Sudan’s government is violating its legal obligations under domestic law and international human-rights law, the UN investigators said.
Justice Minister Joseph Geng, in an official response to the UN commission, said the investigators “relied on unverified information.” He said the allegations of oil-related corruption were “absurd” and were an attempt to smear the “good image” of South Sudan’s people and leaders.