Germany shuts embassy in South Sudan amid growing civil war concerns

Germany has temporarily shut down its embassy in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, due to escalating tensions that have pushed the country toward the brink of civil war.

This development was announced by the German foreign ministry on Saturday.

The unrest follows South Sudanese President Salva Kiir’s recent dismissal of the governor of Upper Nile state, where fighting has intensified between government forces and an ethnic militia accused of siding with his rival, First Vice President Riek Machar, Reuters reported.

The growing standoff has raised fears that South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, could relapse into conflict just seven years after emerging from a brutal civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

During the country’s five-year civil war, which ended in 2018, more than 400,000 people were killed.

“After years of fragile peace, South Sudan is once again on the brink of civil war,” the German foreign ministry wrote on x.

“President Kiir and Vice President Machar are plunging the country into a spiral of violence. It’s their responsibility to end this senseless violence & finally implement the peace agreement.”

South Sudan’s United Nations peacekeeping chief, Nicholas Haysom, has also expressed concern that the country is “on the brink of relapse into civil war.”

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan has warned, “We are witnessing an alarming regression that could erase years of hard-won progress.”

In its 2024 report, it noted that half the country was already facing food insecurity, with two million people internally displaced and another two million having fled to neighbouring countries.