The Human Rights Division of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) [official website] released a report [PDF] on Friday that revealed the findings of a year-long investigation into human rights violations in the Yei Town, Central Equatoria area of South Sudan. The human rights violations stem from violence between the government and opposition forces led by Riek Machar [BBC profile]. The report found 114 cases of Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and allied militias killing civilians that were perceived to be supporters of the opposition group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), based on their ethnicity. The documented cases included [press release] attacks on funerals, indiscriminate shelling of civilians, and sexual violence towards women and girls with an excessive degree of brutality. The report also found that the SPLA subjected civilians to detention and torture while looting and destroying their property. Aside from the casualties, these human rights violations has also led to the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians who are fleeing the ethnically motivated violence. The documented cases in the UN report refer mostly to violations committed by the SPLA because the government would not allow the investigators into areas that were occupied by opposition forces. However, the report does include a few cases of human rights violations committed by the SPLM. These cases include similar instances of murder, rape, and abduction.

The conditions in Sudan have been a pressing issue in the past few years. As recently as last month Eugene Owusu, the top United Nations official in South Sudan, warned [JURIST report] that without peace in South Sudan, humanitarian conditions would continue to deteriorate. Only days earlier Owusu made a similar plea [JURIST report] to the government and opposition of South Sudan to ensure the protection of civilians and aid workers in the country. South Sudan [JURIST backgrounder], which was officially recognized [JURIST report] as an independent nation in July 2011, has spent much of its brief history as a nation in civil war. In March, the Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan [official website] said [JURIST report] that there is a need to establish courts and bring prosecutions against those who have committed rights abuses throughout the nation’s conflicts. In January, UNMISS reported [JURIST report] that a violent period in July 2016 left hundreds of civilians dead. In December the UN said [JURIST report] that ethnic cleansing was occurring in South Sudan.