(Bloomberg) — South Sudan postponed elections that were due in December for two years, extending the mandate of the nation’s transition government.
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The delay will allow for the implementation of “critical remaining protocols” agreed under a 2018 peace accord to end a civil war in the East African nation, President Salva Kiir’s office said in a Sept. 13 statement. These include the drafting of a permanent constitution, a census, and the registration of political parties, it said.
“The extension is in response to the recommendations from both electoral institutions and the security sector,” the office said.
South Sudan has been beset by conflict since it seceded from its northern neighbor, Sudan, in 2011. The civil war that erupted in 2013 caused almost 400,000 “excess deaths,” according to a US State Department-funded study.
The United Nations warned in March that the country needs to manage the election carefully to ensure chaos doesn’t ensue after the vote.
South Sudan has faced “intensified fights over resources, high unemployment, political competition among the ruling elite, increased inter-communal clashes and the added strain of returnees and refugees escaping the conflict” in neighboring Sudan, the UN said in July. If elections aren’t managed carefully, there is a “potential for violence with disastrous consequences for an already fragile country and the wider region,” it added.
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