United Nations officials have raised alarmed over the inter-ethnic violence in South Sudan, which has been in a state of civil war for the duration of its three-year existence, is providing fertile ground for a genocide. Earlier this month, Adama Dieng, the U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, warned the Security Council of the risk of “outright ethnic war” and the “potential for genocide” in Central Equatoria and the Yei region. A UN commission on Human Rights that  had travelled around South Sudan for 10 days, declared that gang rape, starvation and mass arson of villages are being used as means of killing civilians, which borders on a genocide.

The armed conflict, which broke out in December 2013 between forces loyal to the President Salva Kiir and those backing  the Vice President Riek Machar, who has been plotting a coup after being fired by Kirr, has killed tens of thousands, caused widespread hunger and forced two million people from their homes. Since then, 1.8 million people have fled the world’s youngest country. This is the largest mass exodus of any conflict in central Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Over 4,000 people a day have been crossing into Uganda, while another 36,600 refugees have reached Ethiopia since early September, and over 57,000 fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo this year.

The UN rights experts are expected to publish a report on their findings in March.

For more information, please read:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southsudan-congo-refugees-idUSKBN13Q50M
http://www.voanews.com/a/south-sudan/3617691.html
http://time.com/4588492/south-sudan-genocide-ethnic-cleansing-un/
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/south-sudan-denies-allegations-ethnic-cleansing-161201182935132.html
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/dec/18/mass-atrocities-feared-in-south-sudan-as-ethnic-violence-is-stoked-by-hunger