In a newly published report, human rights group Amnesty International has accused United Nations peacekeepers and South Sudanese authorities of failing to prevent a deadly attack on the village of Abiemnom earlier this year. The attack left more than 200 people dead, with over 1,000 armed men from neighboring Mayom County reportedly carrying out the assault, which involved shooting residents, burning homes, and looting part of the hospital.
According to Amnesty's findings, UNMISS, the UN mission in South Sudan, had been warned about an impending attack on Abiemnom but did not reinforce its approximately three dozen peacekeepers stationed there until after the March 1 assault. This failure to act in a timely manner has been criticized by Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty's director for East and Southern Africa, who stated that both the government and UNMISS had enough time to take stronger preventive action but failed to do so, resulting in loss of life.
The attack appears to have been triggered by tensions over earlier killings of several young men from Mayom County. UNMISS spokesperson Priyanka Chowdhury acknowledged that the mission did its best with limited resources to protect and treat around 2,500 people sheltering at a protected area they had set up in anticipation of the attack. However, she noted that due to budget cuts, the mission had prioritized immediate protection of civilians seeking refuge within their base.
The UN Security Council (UNSC) renewed UNMISS's mandate in April but reduced its authorized troop ceiling from 17,000 to 12,000. The elections in South Sudan are scheduled for December 22, and there are concerns that a rushed election could be detrimental to the peace agreement signed in 2018, which ended five years of brutal civil war. Amnesty International has called for an independent investigation into the killings and a separate review of the peacekeepers' response, emphasizing the need for truth, justice, and assurances that such a tragedy will never happen again. South Sudanese authorities have not responded to two letters from Amnesty requesting information and responses to the report's preliminary findings.