UN Readies For Critical Vote On South Sudan’s Arms Embargo
The annual renewal of the UN arms embargo on South Sudan comes up for a vote in May. In this Q&A, Crisis Group expert Maya Ungar warns that ending the mandate entirely would risk fuelling a return to civil war in the country.
What is happening?
In late May, the UN Security Council will vote on whether to renew the UN arms embargo on South Sudan for twelve months. The vote comes as the country teeters on the edge of another civil war. Prior to the outbreak of fighting in March in Nasir, a town in Upper Nile state, the prospect of mustering the minimum nine votes on the Council needed to extend the embargo, which has helped limit imports of heavy weapons, appeared slim. The South Sudanese government, which argues that UN sanctions hamper its efforts to maintain security, had convinced a growing number of Council members to vote to end the restriction. But the risk of a return to all-out war – coupled with signals from the new U.S. administration that it wants the embargo to survive – has left the vote’s outcome in doubt.
UN sanctions were first imposed on South Sudan in 2015, during its post-independence civil war between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and others following Vice President Riek Machar, whom Kiir accused of attempting a coup d’état in 2013. The Security Council placed asset freezes and travel bans on senior military officers from both sides. It was slower to agree to a full-fledged arms embargo, in part because of opposition from Chinese and Russian representatives, who argued it would be counterproductive to attempts to reach a lasting peace agreement. In 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first administration, the U.S. made a successful push for a sweeping embargo covering weapons, military vehicles, training and other forms of assistance to the entirety of South Sudan. This action followed continued violations of a ceasefire agreement between the sides. While the Council softened the ban in 2022, adding an exemption for non-lethal military equipment in a show of support for the 2018 peace agreement between Kiir and Machar that ended the civil war, the embargo’s main elements have remained in place.
The fragile 2018 peace arrangement, however, broke down in March as armed conflict reignited. Kiir’s restructuring of the national security apparatus, combined with fears over his succession (his health appears to be in decline) rankled both allies and opponents. The state’s economic woes compounded these tensions: South Sudan has lost most of its state revenue after its largest oil pipeline, which runs through war-torn Sudan, fell into disrepair. Uganda has bolstered Kiir’s position by sending troops and warplanes in violation of the arms embargo, helping government forces recapture Nasir. But it is likely that more violence is on the way. Fighting has also spread around the capital Juba, including in Morobo, Lainya and Kajo Keji counties in Central Equatoria state, as well as Mundri East county in Western Equatoria state. As the fighting gathers steam, all sides are likely to intensify their search abroad for weaponry.
What is the track record of the arms embargo?
While the scope of the arms embargo is broad in theory, its application has always been patchy in practice. As with other UN sanctions regimes, the Security Council relies on UN member states to legislate and enforce the embargo through national mechanisms (even then, the UN does not have the teeth to force compliance). A Panel of Experts mandated by the Council monitors and reports on sanctions violations. Its reports assemble evidence of illicit arms imports based on evidence such as sightings of barred weapons or information about recent deals, but it is unable to offer a systematic overview of where the South Sudanese parties obtain their arms or the scale of the purchases. The available evidence suggests that the embargo has had little impact on flows of small arms and light weapons, but that it has helped curb imports of heavy weapons.
South Sudan is awash with small arms, which power the low-intensity conflicts involving irregular forces that plague large parts of the country. The country’s porous borders, coupled with the government’s difficulties in securing its own stockpiles (in part because it is common practice for the military elite to divert weapons to arm militias drawn from their own ethnic groups or to sell them when their salaries are not paid), make it very difficult for the embargo to be enforced on small arms and light weapons.
UN restrictions appear to have made it harder for actors to deploy heavy weapons, including tanks and air assets.
On the other hand, UN restrictions appear to have made it harder for actors to deploy heavy weapons, including tanks and air assets. The government has not made regular use of attack helicopters – which would be especially helpful to them given the country’s poor infrastructure and widespread flooding – probably due to difficulties in getting the spare parts needed to keep them flying (the government appeared to rely mostly on Ugandan aircraft in recent fighting in Upper Nile). Government and opposition forces have also not deployed newer technologies such as drones, which have become commonplace in other war zones in the region, including Ethiopia and Sudan.
UN officials and independent experts consulted by Crisis Group acknowledge that other factors – such as costs and logistical obstacles – help explain the relative paucity of heavy weapons in South Sudan, but they agree that lifting the arms embargo and opening up opportunities for even more weapons to flow into the country would allow the parties to inflict more casualties and give them options to escalate hostilities further.
Although the government has the right to request exemptions from the Security Council sanctions committee covering South Sudan, UN reports suggest that it is importing some military equipment – such as armoured vehicles – without contacting the sanctions committee. When Uganda sent its forces to support President Kiir, Kampala made no effort to notify the UN. Monitoring of the arms embargo by the Panel of Experts can discourage suppliers from providing arms, however. In their 2024 report, Panel members note an instance where a company had announced an agreement to sell vehicles to South Sudan’s army, which immediately met with pushback, leading the government to insist it had not made a deal because it was still under the arms embargo. In response to the Panel’s inquiries, the company told UN experts that it had decided not to move forward with the sale.
Why do some Council members oppose the embargo?
Arms embargoes on African countries have largely fallen out of favour. The Council has moved to strike down or adjust a number of them in recent years, in part because the body’s African members – generally backed by China and Russia – have argued that they unfairly restrain state forces. Some of these votes have been considerably less contentious than the one on South Sudan; the 2024 vote to lift the embargo on the entire territory of the Central African Republic (CAR) was unanimous. But not all arms embargoes are created equal. UN embargoes on CAR and the Democratic Republic of Congo have had little or no impact on arms flows in recent years, although UN experts have done solid work tracking violations. In the case of South Sudan, as noted above, there is evidence that the embargo has had some effect on arms flows.
Since the arms embargo’s inception, the South Sudanese government has lobbied Council members to lift it. The government’s position is that the embargo makes it more difficult to build national security institutions necessary to protect civilians, while impeding its efforts to arm and train the national military. In keeping with their stance toward other African embargoes, China and Russia support the government position. That said, neither country has vetoed the South Sudan embargo’s renewal as neither sees it as a crucial national security issue (while Russia has used its veto to assist key allies in Africa in recent years, it is not very close to Juba). The South Sudanese government has also succeeded in persuading the Council’s three African members – all of which have taken issue with UN arms embargoes in Somalia and CAR – that they should help end the regime. Firm backing for the embargo, meanwhile, has traditionally come from the U.S., as well as European and most Asian and Latin American Council members, who have argued that it must be retained to avoid an unfettered flow of arms as well as to press the parties to South Sudan’s conflict to honour the peace deals they have signed.
Opponents of the embargo have whittled away the number of Council members supporting it. Under Council rules, nine affirmative votes are needed for a resolution to pass. In 2023, China, Russia and all three African members of the Council abstained on the renewal, reducing the majority in favour to ten. In 2024, Guyana – which supports the Council’s African members on matters affecting the continent on principle – joined the abstainers, bringing the number of supporters down to a bare nine. At present, many Council diplomats expect Pakistan, which replaced Japan as one of the body’s two Asian members in January, to vote to lift the embargo – which would kill it off.
Recent escalations and the hazards of stoking a wider conflict, however, could persuade some Council members to rethink. A report released by the UN Secretary-General in April on South Sudan’s progress on a set of benchmarks the Council laid out in 2021 – which set guidelines for conditions to lift or ease the embargo – supports the case against lifting it now. While the report flagged minor progress on efforts to overhaul the South Sudanese security sector and military, it noted that the country had made no headway in demobilising former fighters, reducing conflict-related sexual violence or, perhaps most critically, securing arms stockpiles. The lack of progress on these benchmarks are all tied to arms control; for example, the UN has found that weapon-free zones in protection camps in South Sudan have resulted in a decrease in conflict-related sexual violence. As armed conflict resurges, it is likely that even the modest advances noted by the report may now be undone.
What should the Security Council do?
The arms embargo has flaws, but lifting it now could stoke escalating violence in the country. Since the outbreak of fighting in Nasir, President Kiir has moved rapidly to crack down on his opponents, including by jailing Vice President Machar. As Crisis Group has noted, Kiir has also rejected offers by regional leaders to mediate the crisis – and refuses to let them talk to Machar. If the Council ends the arms embargo, the government is likely to see the decision as a signal that it can ratchet up its offensive with little international interference. It would certainly have fewer problems acquiring the necessary weaponry. The opposition would likely interpret the move as a sign that it should prepare for further and more deadly fighting.
Even if the embargo only functions patchily, the Security Council should refrain from dropping it altogether, but instead put greater pressure on conflict parties and regional partners to abide by it. One timely move that the Council could take would be to remind UN member states of their obligation to enforce the embargo at the national level. The U.S. Department of Justice did exactly that in 2024, arresting two South Sudanese opposition activists whom they accused of attempting to export millions of dollars’ worth of arms to South Sudan in violation of the embargo (the activists meant to help stage a coup d’état). The UN Panel of Experts has to date not registered any similar enforcement action elsewhere.
Given the risks of spreading violence, the Council should pass a technical rollover of the arms embargo for one year. If negotiations get stuck, however, compromise is better than lifting the embargo entirely. The Secretary-General’s April report provides ideas about how to resolve some of the South Sudanese government’s concerns about the embargo. It suggests that the Council could, for example, add exemptions that would allow for imports of less lethal weapons and ammunition (like tear gas for riot police) to deal with concerns such as any disturbances around future elections.
The arms embargo should not remain indefinitely in place, but bolder steps to dismantle it should only be taken if and when the current crisis abates. Otherwise, Council members risk freeing up the market for weapons just as the country stands on the brink of another civil war.