Congressman Thomas J. Rooney

Representing the 17th District of Florida

Lawmakers to UN: “Urge Arms Embargo Against South Sudan”

Dec 15, 2016
Press Release

WASHINGTON, D.C - Congressman Tom Rooney (FL-17) was joined by a bipartisan group of 19 lawmakers calling for the United Nations Security Council to immediately impose an arms embargo against South Sudan to halt the escalating ethnic violence and avert the risk of genocide in the county. Letters were sent to each of the 15 members of the UN Security Council urging their support of a resolution imposing an arms embargo before the end of the year.

Today marks three years since fighting in Juba, South Sudan’s capital, ignited a brutal conflict that has since displaced three million people, including nearly 1.9 million who are internally displaced and more than 1.3 million fleeing as refugees to neighboring countries. Recent reports describe how government forces have for months been carrying out a brutal campaign of systematic rape of women and children, extrajudicial killings, abductions, torture, looting and burning of homes, and violence against humanitarian personnel. In Juba alone, 70 percent of women have experienced sexual assault, with rape being used as a “tool for ethnic cleansing.” Three quarters of the nation’s 11 million people are currently experiencing unprecedented levels of food insecurity and acute malnutrition, with some areas of the country increasingly reaching emergency and catastrophe levels due the deepening economic crisis, ongoing violence, and insufficient agricultural production. There are no up-to-date reliable statistics on the death toll since the start of the conflict, with the most recent estimate of at least 50 thousand dead, because those charged with monitoring the scale and impact of the conflict are impeded from doing so, kicked out of the country, or killed.

“Congress has been calling for the Administration and the Security Council to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan for over two years now. What I cannot grasp is why that has not happened yet,” Rooney said. “What I do not understand is why – when we know that the government is spending whatever money it can scrounge up not to feed its starving people – but to purchase attack helicopters, armored vehicles and arms to kill its own people. The people of South Sudan need the leadership of the international community to help bring peace to their country and stop the senseless and brutal violence being carried out by their own government.”

A UN embargo would send a clear signal to the government of South Sudan that the systematic murder of its own citizens is unacceptable and will not be tolerated by the international community. Currently, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, New Zealand and Spain have vocally supported the embargo. The remaining ten nations on the Security Council – Senegal, Ukraine, Japan, Malaysia, China, Russia, Uruguay, Venezuela, Angola and Egypt – have yet to offer their public support for an embargo, despite findings from the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan that “there is already a steady process of ethnic cleansing underway in several areas of South Sudan using starvation, gang rape and the burning of villages. The stage is being set for a repeat of what happened in Rwanda, and the international community is under an obligation to prevent it.” Of the fifteen members of the UN Security Council, a vote of nine is needed to approve the resolution.

“Given the undeniable evidence of a catastrophe unfolding, I implore those members of the Security Council to be on the right side of history, and humanity, and publicly commit to support an arms embargo. Words will not stop South Sudan’s leaders from starving, raping, brutalizing and murdering thousands upon thousands of its own people.”

Below you can read full text of each letter sent to Security Council members:

-Angola 

-China

-Egypt

-France

-Japan

-Malaysia

-New Zealand

-Russia

-Senegal

-Spain

-United Kingdom

-Ukraine

-United States

-Uruguay

-Venezuela