\n South Sudan on Saturday postponed its first national elections from December to February amid growing violence, political battles between its president and deposed vice president and voter registration only just starting.\n<\/p>\n
\n Legislative and presidential elections had been scheduled for December 22, having already been delayed several times.\n<\/p>\n
\n The electoral commission issued a new calendar on social media Saturday, with a new election date of February 11 and the results to be announced four days later.\n<\/p>\n
\n Commission secretary general Ahon Malou Lueth confirmed the change to AFP but would not explain why the decision had been taken or give other details.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan recently warned that a December election could set off widespread conflict if used to dismantle the political settlement agreed in 2018 to prevent another war.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"A negotiated settlement has been displaced under cover of elections,\" Yasmin Sooka, Chair of the Commission, said in October.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"This amounts to a constitutional coup through legislative reforms: the unilateral dismantling of the inclusive power-sharing settlement and concentration of all authority in the President.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The 2018 peace accord that ended the war brought in a government of national unity where Kiir would serve as president and Machar his deputy.\n<\/p>\n
\n But Machar was suspended and charged with treason and murder in 2025.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Voter registration problems -\n<\/p>\n
\n With voter registration far from being completed, the schedule for a December vote also presented significant logistical challenges.\n<\/p>\n
\n According to the World Bank, some 90 percent of the country's 15 million inhabitants have no state-recognised identification, further complicating the process.\n<\/p>\n
\n The new election date was announced on the day voter registration was due to start, with more than 3,100 centres set up across the country. But not all the necessary equipment had arrived at the centres, officials said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Under the new calendar the electoral commission published on Facebook, registration was still due to begin Saturday.\n<\/p>\n
\n President Salva Kiir's government forces and followers of former vice president Riek Machar have been involved in escalating, deadly confrontations since Machar's 2025 arrest.\n<\/p>\n
\n Other ethnic tensions and cattle-rustling battles have also complicated the picture in one of the world's poorest countries.\n<\/p>\n
\n South Sudan became independent from Sudan in 2011, but Kiir's and Machar's forces fought a civil war from 2013 to 2018 that killed at least 400,000 people.\n<\/p>\n
\n Machar has been under house arrest since March 2025, accused of \"crimes against humanity\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The joint Kiir-Machar administration had been tasked with paving the way to elections in 2022.\n<\/p>\n
\n Those elections however have been repeatedly postponed with the administration having implemented virtually none of the provisions in the peace agreement.\n<\/p>\n
\n The announcement of this latest postponement however got a hostile reception from some activists.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"There are no elections in South Sudan as I have been telling you,\" rights campaigner Malong Deng told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The government tries to control the power by all means.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The UN Commission has also repeatedly warned about conditions in the country, including the displacement of tens of thousands of people, the deadly battles and the disruption of international humanitarian operations.\n<\/p>\n
\n It said in October that the tensions of recent months heightened \"the risk of renewed conflict and atrocity crimes\".<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Sudan on Saturday postponed its first national elections from December to February amid growing violence, political battles between its president and deposed vice president and voter registration only just starting. Legislative and presidential elections had been scheduled for December 22, having already been delayed several times. The electoral commission issued a new calendar on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-168488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n