(Bloomberg) — South Sudan has postponed elections scheduled for December for two years, extending the mandate of the country’s transitional government.
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The delay will allow for the implementation of “critical remaining protocols” agreed under a 2018 peace deal to end a civil war in the East African country, President Salva Kiir’s office said in a Sept. 13 statement. These include the drafting of a permanent constitution, a census and the registration of political parties, it said.
“The extension is in response to recommendations from both the electoral institutions and the security sector,” the agency said.
South Sudan has been ravaged by conflict since it seceded from its northern neighbor Sudan in 2011. The civil war that broke out in 2013 caused nearly 400,000 “excess deaths,” according to a study funded by the U.S. State Department.
The United Nations warned in March that the country must manage the election carefully to avoid chaos after the vote.
South Sudan is facing “intensified fighting over resources, high unemployment, political competition among the ruling elite, increased inter-communal conflict and the added pressure of returnees and refugees fleeing the conflict” in neighbouring Sudan, the UN said in July. If elections are not managed carefully, there is a “potential for violence with disastrous consequences for an already fragile country and the wider region”, it added.
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