What flight of South Sudan’s rebel leader means

“Low levels of funding, together with a large number of new arrivals fleeing to Uganda from South Sudan since July 7, has left the refugee response with no choice but to re-prioritize their focus on those refugees in greatest need”, the statement said. “We’re not in a position to confirm his location”, Farhan Haq said.

Gatdet Dak did not confirm media reports that Machar had arrived in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“The over-focus on a new peacekeeping mandate at the expense of political developments in the country reflects worldwide disunity and a lack of political strategy”, said the global Crisis Group in a report on Tuesday.

An earlier statement from Machar’s SPLM-IO party said the leader had been “evacuated to a safe country within the region”, without naming the DRC.

South Sudanese government which had been on the offensive, trying to hunt him down in the bush where he had been hiding said on Friday that it was not aware of Machar’s whereabouts. Under the deal, Machar returned to Juba in April to resume his role as vice president.

NAIROBI (Xinhua) – South Sudan’s government said it will complete the process of merging government and opposition troops by the end of May 2017. The agreement has been violated repeatedly by fighting.

One former child soldier in South Sudan said he expected to be cooking and cleaning when he joined the army at age 16, but he wound up being ordered into combat.

Machar disappeared from Juba following the July fighting.

The UN agency noted that unconditional access for all humanitarian interventions in Juba and all other parts of the country is urgently needed so as to provide support, protection, and assistance to children and women.

August 2016: The opposition figure flees the country.

Last year UNICEF helped free 1,775 former child soldiers from various armed groups, but Forsyth warned that recent fighting which engulfed the capital Juba last month and has thrown a shaky peace deal into doubt would lead to fresh recruitment.

In another development, the United Nations revealed that the government in Juba has recruited child soldiers over the past week in preparation for a new conflict.

According to an internal United Nations document obtained by the Associated Press on Friday, Kiir appointed a senior politician to lead the recruitment of an entire village of boys. Some were as young as 12 years old.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has failed to fulfill the most important goal of any UN peacekeeping mission today – to protect civilians caught in the crossfire from harm.

South Sudan’s civil war began in December 2013 and has killed tens of thousands of people.