UN: South Sudan path to peace ‘long, complex’

South Sudan faces a “long, complex process” on its path to resolve the conflict in the country, says a UN official.

On Wednesday, UN Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations Hervé Ladsous warned of difficult challenges in resolving the conflict between the government of President Salva Kiir and the opposition in South Sudan.

“It is going to be a very long, complex process to address all the deep roots of this very big crisis,” the UN official told reporters after a UN Security Council meeting on South Sudan’s crisis.

The UN peacekeeping chief also highlighted the importance of sticking to the conditions of a truce agreement presented by mediators from the regional bloc of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) last month.

“It is important that the entire international community express total support for IGAD because it is the only diplomatic initiative,” he said.

The comments came after humanitarian officials reported that they have only been able to help about a third of the 870,000 South Sudanese people displaced by the fighting.

South Sudan has been witnessing deadly clashes since December 15, 2013, when the president accused his sacked deputy, Riek Machar, of attempting to stage a coup.

The conflict soon turned into an all-out war between the army and defectors, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president’s Dinka tribe against Machar’s Nuer ethnic group.

The International Crisis Group said on January 9 that about 10,000 people had been killed in the violence.