Petition the Obama Administration on Behalf of South Sudan

Petition the Obama Administration on Behalf of South Sudan July 6, 2015

This month, President Obama will be in Ethiopia and Kenya. During this visit, he has a unique opportunity to advocate for the victims of war crimes in the ongoing South Sudanese civil war.

South Sudan became the world’s newest nation in 2011, with the help and support of the Obama Administration. However, increasing tensions between President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar erupted in December of 2013. Twenty thousand innocent and unarmed civilians were killed in a door-to-door targeted massacre. This unimaginably inhumane act took place in just three days. The violence that quickly engulfed the whole nation claimed so many lives that the local community and the United Nations Mission in South Sudan lost track of the dead. Towns and cities have been destroyed, millions of people have been displaced internally and left at risk of hunger and starvation, and hundreds of thousands more have sought refuge in neighboring countries.

Attempts to broker peace have so far been unsuccessful, and the war continues to worsen. George Clooney recently wrote about the need for financial pressure on South Sudan as a means of accountability.

This Sunday, Nicholas Kristof devoted his column to strife in South Sudan and called on President Obama to use his upcoming Africa visit to increase the pressure on both sides. What Kristof describes in South Sudan is unrelentingly brutal. We as human beings and as Americans cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the suffering people of South Sudan. (Trigger warning: descriptions of violence, including sexual violence, ahead.) Kristof writes:

The accounts of the displaced people I interviewed are supported by a new United Nations report describing a “new brutality and intensity” to attacks in the area, citing nine separate instances in which government forces raped women or girls and then burned them alive in huts. …

“The violence against children in South Sudan has reached a new level of brutality,” warned Anthony Lake, executive director of Unicef, alluding to the army’s assault. “Survivors report that boys have been castrated and left to bleed to death. … Girls as young as 8 have been gang raped and murdered. … Children have been tied together before their attackers slit their throats.”

One of the biggest factors in the ongoing continuation of war and crimes against humanity is the lack of accountability. Kristof goes on to say:

On his Africa trip, Obama should work closely with Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia to impose targeted sanctions on the families of recalcitrant leaders in all factions, so they pay a price until there is peace. The United States has donated $1.1 billion in aid to South Sudan since the civil war began, but what is most needed isn’t money but tough, hands-on diplomacy to pressure all sides. Ethiopia has been trying to hammer out a peace, and it deserves more Western backing.

On June 10, several organizations (secular and religious)–including the National Association of Evangelicals–joined forces to petition the Obama administration to do more for the people of South Sudan. They point out that while “the Obama administration issued Executive Order 13664 in April 2014, making way for U.S. sanctions on South Sudanese individuals who commit human rights violations, only four commanders have been sanctioned.” Threatening sanctions is not enough; there needs to be follow-through. The letter urges the following action steps:

In response to escalation in violence, the U.S. should take the lead in making additional sanctions designations against persons who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for civilian life and the suffering of their own people. We encourage the U.S. government immediately to:

  1. Impose a new round of designations against those responsible for serious violations and request the Treasury Department prioritize evidence collection on South Sudanese targets.

  2. Push for complementary sanctions designations at the UN Security Council, including an arms embargo to prevent weapons and ammunition being used by the warring parties to further more abuses.

  3. Call on other states to impose their own targeted sanctions regimes.

You can join your voices to petition the Obama administration, including the President, Secretary of State John Kerry, Ambassador Samantha Power, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice, to use President Obama’s upcoming visit to Africa to impose pressure on both sides in the South Sudanese civil war in order that the innocent may be protected and the conflict may come to an end. Below are links to three petitions that you can sign. You can also click on the leaders’ names above to find contact information for them. Keep in mind that personal contact–email, phone calls, and letters that are not form letters–are even more effective and powerful than form letters.

This is something we can all come together on. Crimes against humanity must stop and the innocent must be protected. Please join me.

Sign The Enough Project’s petition here.

Sign United to End Genocide’s petition here.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: Sign this petition I just created at WhiteHouse.gov.

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