Efforts to unify soldiers in South Sudan ‘stuck’: UN envoy

The United Nations special envoy to South Sudan on Tuesday said almost no progress has been made in unifying the country’s warring forces under one army, as promised under a hard-fought peace deal. The pledge to bring government and rebel soldiers under a national banner was a cornerstone of a September 2018 peace agreement that paused five years of bloodshed in which 380,000 people died. But troops brought together at joint training sites across the troubled country were deserting because of a lack of food and other essentials, said UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) special representative David Shearer. “There has been almost no movement on the critical areas of security sector reform,” Shearer told a news conference in Juba. “At the moment, the process is stuck. It hasn’t even moved past the first stage, where forces are trained and graduated. Urgent action is needed to move the process forward.” style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0; left: 0;">