The African Union has deferred the presentation of a report on the war crimes that have been reported in South Sudan as leaders of the two forces accused of perpetrating them failed to reach a peace deal during negotiations at the Sheraton Hotel in Addis Ababa on Thursday.
Yesterday the African Union summit coincided with the IGAD East African heads of state summit, where resolutions or decisions on South Sudan’s peace process were expected to be made. But the afternoon IGAD meeting was unexpectedly halted without outcome after leaders of South Sudan’s SPLM-IO and SPLM-Juba factions failed to agree on key issues.
IGAD Executive Secretary Mahboub Maalim told journalists at the Addis Ababa venue yesterday that the IGAD heads of state meeting was called off until Saturday, without explaining the unexpected change.
The Kenyan Presidency confirmed this in a press statement saying the summit was “formally postponed after hours of consultations between the Heads of State and Government from the IGAD bloc on the one side and the two sides of the South Sudan Conflict.”
A source at the event told Radio Tamazuj that the morning and early afternoon negotiations between Riek Machar and Salva Kiir had not gone well. Machar himself was quoted by VOA as saying after a closed-door session that they did not agree on “the structure of government, the power-sharing issues, the constitution and national assembly.”
Following the postponement of the IGAD meeting the African Union Peace and Security Council met in the evening. The AU had announced ahead of the meeting that the Council would be presented with the report of the AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan.
But the chairman of the commission ex-Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo instead told press last night that consideration of the report was ‘deferred’ until after conclusion of the IGAD peace talks.
The IGAD organizers of the peace negotiations have yet to make any announcement about how the talks will proceed now that the summit has been postponed. Several presidents had flown into Addis Ababa to participate in the event including those of Uganda, Sudan and Kenya.
Meanwhile, the African Union resolutions from last night’s meeting were not immediately available. The AU mandated the creation of the Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan more than a year ago after widespread human rights abuses were reported in Juba, Bentiu, Bor and elsewhere in South Sudan at the outset of the civil war.
So far the Commission has made several visits to South Sudan but it has not said anything about the reported atrocities, instead saying in an interim report in June that it could not yet decide if international law has been violated in South Sudan during the civil war, citing inadequate time, funding, and access to complete investigations.
Six months later, the Commission has finished its report but continues to keep it confidential. The United Nations’ top human rights official has called on the AU to make it public. Riek Machar, head of one of the warring parties, has also said the report should be made public.
Photo: Olusegun Obasanjo speaking to journalists in Addis Ababa, 29 January 2015 (AU)