Peacekeeping Mission In South Sudan Has Been Extended For A Year

 

The U.N. Security Council has unanimously passed a draft resolution extending its peacekeeping mission in violence-plagued South Sudan by a year. The U.S.-drafted resolution calls for both sides to adhere to a peace deal signed in August 2015 and that U.N. peacekeepers do more to prevent and respond to sexual violence in the country.

In a vote of 15-0, council members called Friday for creation of a 4,000-troop Regional Protection Force in addition to the approximately 13,000 peacekeepers already there.

Two years after the African country's independence from neighbouring Sudan in 2011, South Sudan was plunged into ethnic violence when forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, started battling those loyal to Riek Machar, his former vice-president and a Nuer.