South Sudan's government has confirmed the country will hold long-awaited national elections in December — a declaration that experts say carries enormous risk given that the world's youngest nation remains teetering on the edge of a return to full-scale civil war, with fighting raging across multiple regions and hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by renewed violence.
The announcement from Information Minister Michael Makuei Luheay confirmed what many observers had feared: that elections would proceed on schedule despite the collapse of key provisions in the 2018 peace agreement that was supposed to unite a nation divided by a brutal conflict between President Salva Kiir and his then-deputy Riek Machar.
A Peace Deal Under Severe Strain
The 2018 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) brought an end to fighting that killed nearly 400,000 people and displaced millions more. Under its terms, Kiir and Machar were to share power in a transitional government, and national elections were to follow the reunification of rival armed forces — a process that has repeatedly stalled.
More than seven years after independence from Sudan, South Sudan has yet to hold its first national election. The process has been delayed repeatedly — elections were originally scheduled for 2022 — and the prerequisites for credible voting, including a unified military and a constitutional framework, remain unmet.
Makuei insisted that elections must proceed on the December timeline regardless of the security situation, telling journalists that the government was "committed to the peace agreement" and that elections were a central pillar of the transition. He did not address the question of how credible balloting could be conducted in areas where active fighting makes population movement impossible.
Fighting Rages as Deadline Approaches
The reality on the ground stands in stark contrast to the government's optimistic public posture. Clashes between government forces and armed groups aligned with opposition commanders have escalated sharply in recent months, particularly in the Greater Upper Nile region. The violence has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes, overwhelming aid agencies that are themselves frequently targeted in the fighting.
United Nations officials and international mediators have warned privately that the combination of unresolved military questions, continued factional violence, and political pressure to hold elections on a fixed timeline could trigger a catastrophic unraveling of the peace process — exactly the scenario that the R-ARCSS was designed to prevent.
A Nation Already on Its Knees
The humanitarian picture is dire. South Sudan has one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the world, and the suspension of U.S. aid funding — following the Trump administration's sweeping reductions to USAID programming — has gutted the humanitarian response in a country where the majority of the population depends on external assistance to survive.
Poverty is endemic, corruption pervades every level of government, and infrastructure beyond the capital Juba is largely nonexistent. Roads connecting the states to the capital are impassable for much of the year. Health outcomes are among the worst on the planet, with maternal mortality rates reflecting a system under extreme stress.
The December elections, if they proceed as planned, will be the first national polls since South Sudan became independent in 2011. They were meant to mark a transition from conflict to democratic governance — a moment of national legitimacy and stability. Instead, the prospect of voting amid active conflict and without a unified military raises the spectre of elections that deepen rather than resolve the country's existential divisions.
What the International Community Can Do
Regional leaders and international partners face a narrow window to prevent the worst-case scenario. The African Union, IGAD (the Intergovernmental Authority on Development), and key Western partners have called for accelerated implementation of the outstanding security provisions of the peace agreement — including the integration and unification of armed forces under a single command structure.
Whether political pressure can achieve what years of negotiation have failed to deliver is an open question. What is clear is that the stakes — measured in lives lost, people displaced, and a nation pushed back toward war — could not be higher.
Sources: Reuters (April 21, 2026), Africanews