About 120 Rwandan troops have started arriving in South Sudan’s capital Juba as part of the United Nations additional troops expected to protect civilians and guard key installations in the war-doffed country.
The deployment of the additional troops was okayed by the UN earlier this year following days of heavy fighting in Juba between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and those loyal to former first vice president Riek Machar.
There are already 13,000 UN peacekeepers in the country.
The world’s youngest nation descended into war in December 2013 following President Kiir’s accusations that his then deputy Riek Machar was plotting a coup against his government. Machar denied the allegations but then went on to mobilize a rebel force to fight the government.
A peace deal signed in 2015 has continually been violated by the warring factions, with the fighting killing thousands and forcing millions to flee their homes.
Currently, the UN ranks South Sudan as Africa’s biggest refugee crisis, and third worldwide after Syria and Afghanistan.
In addition to Rwanda, the other troop contributing countries are Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Nepal to make up the additional 4,000 peacekeepers.
The UN now urges the troop contributing countries to speed up the process of the deployment, the deployment process has now taken a year and the 2015 peace deal is also left only with a year to come to an end.
