Political Quotes

“several of the warring parties in the South Sudanese civil war, including President Kiir and the leader of the main opposition party, Riek Machar, recently signed a power-sharing deal to ostensibly bring to an end a conflict that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and the largest refugee crisis in Africa. Today in South Sudan, there are nearly 200,000 people sheltering at UN peacekeeping bases, 4.5 million people have been forcibly displaced, and an estimated 7 million people are in need of humanitarian aid. Several ceasefires have been negotiated and broken by both sides since the conflict began in December 2013, and the United States has invested well over $3 billion in humanitarian aid to help the people of South Sudan who have been largely abandoned by their political leaders. Unfortunately, the viability of the recent power-sharing deal and the prospects for a broader peace agreement remain in question. What we do know is that decades of corruption, marginalization, political manipulation, and human rights atrocities led to the most recent iteration of catastrophic violence in South Sudan, and it will take decades for the country to fully recover, but there is at least one action that President Kiir should take today that would have immediate benefits: the release of all political prisoners, journalists, academics, and others who have been detained as a result of peacefully exercising their right to free expression.…”