South Sudan is once again sliding toward a larger war, and the humanitarian cost is already enormous
South Sudan has once again found itself on the brink of a deeper armed conflict, and the latest data from international organizations and diplomatic bodies show that the security and humanitarian situation is rapidly deteriorating. While the country is formally still relying on the peace framework agreed in 2018, developments on the ground, especially in Jonglei and parts of Upper Nile, raise the serious question of whether the world’s youngest state could once again collapse into a broader civil war. At the center of the new warnings are the fate of missing humanitarian workers, the mass displacement of civilians, disruptions in aid delivery, and increasingly open political and military rivalry between the camps of President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar.
The latest signal of the seriousness of the crisis came in early March, when it was announced that 26 staff members of Médecins Sans Frontières were still out of reach of their colleagues almost a month after attacks on two health facilities in Jonglei State. According to the organization’s data, the hospital in Lankien was bombed on 3 February, while another facility in Pieri was attacked during a raid by armed assailants. Both locations were in opposition-controlled areas, and the staff fled with civilians into hard-to-reach rural areas, where, because of instability and poor communications, some people still cannot be located.
Attacks on health facilities are further deepening the crisis
Attacks on medical facilities in a country like South Sudan have consequences that go beyond the immediate damage to buildings or equipment. In regions where the healthcare system has already been extremely weak for years, every lost hospital or clinic also means an interruption of vaccination, emergency care, maternal care, treatment for children, and therapy for chronically ill patients. When health workers also disappear, the consequences multiply: people are left without care precisely at the moment when needs are growing because of injuries, hunger, forced flight, and diseases spreading in displaced communities.
Médecins Sans Frontières warned that this is only one part of a broader pattern of violence against the humanitarian sector. In the past year, its facilities in South Sudan have been attacked ten times, pointing to a dangerous trend in which neither medical staff nor patients are any longer spared from the logic of war. In practice, this means that humanitarian space is shrinking precisely when it should be at its widest, while the civilian population, especially in remote areas, is being left without its last line of protection.
An additional problem arises because of limited access to the affected areas. Humanitarian organizations warn that fighting and the militarization of key locations have led to the suspension or serious disruption of services. According to information published in international reports, the authorities have suspended humanitarian flights, cutting off the delivery of medical supplies, the movement of staff, and emergency medical evacuations. This is especially dangerous in a country where air transport is often the only way for aid to reach isolated communities before the rainy season and floods.
Hundreds of thousands displaced and growing pressure of hunger
Displacement data show the scale of the crisis. According to humanitarian assessments, around 280,000 people have been displaced from conflict-affected areas of Jonglei since December 2025. Some have sought shelter in other parts of the country, while others have continued fleeing toward areas near the Ethiopian border. Testimonies from the displaced speak of days of walking without enough food and water, of burned homes, and of the fear that return will not happen soon.
Alongside the security threat, the population is also threatened by hunger. The World Food Programme warned that nearly 60 percent of Jonglei’s population could face crisis levels of hunger during the coming rainy season. Such an assessment is particularly alarming because aid must be delivered in advance, before roads become impassable. If that is not done in time because of fighting, humanitarian operations enter a race against mud, floods, and fuel shortages, and the consequences hit children, pregnant women, and older people the hardest.
The broader picture further worsens the country’s position. In the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for 2026, OCHA states that South Sudan is already under heavy pressure because of the conflict in neighboring Sudan. By the end of November 2025, almost 1.3 million refugees and returnees had entered the country since April 2023, and further arrivals are expected during 2026. This means that a state already struggling with violence, poverty, and weak institutions must at the same time also cope with major regional refugee pressure.
An old political conflict again threatens to turn into open war
The background to the latest escalation cannot be understood without the long-standing rivalry between Salva Kiir and Riek Machar. Their political and military conflict turned into a civil war in 2013 marked by ethnic violence, mass atrocities, and millions of displaced people. The 2018 peace agreement, officially known as the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan, was supposed to stop the war and open the way toward transitional government, unification of forces, constitutional changes, and elections. However, a large part of the key tasks was never completed.
An additional sign of the fragility of the process came in September 2024, when the transitional period was once again extended, this time until February 2027, and the elections were moved to December 2026. This is already the fourth extension of the implementation of the agreement since its signing on 12 September 2018. The decision itself was an acknowledgment that the key elements of the transition, from security arrangements to political and constitutional reforms, had not been completed on time. At the same time, this increased mistrust among part of the public toward a political elite that has been postponing the promised exit from the temporary state for years.
In February 2026, the situation became even more serious. At a meeting of the UN Security Council, it was warned that the political deadlock had placed the peace agreement in serious danger and that fear of a return to full civil war was growing. Similar messages were also sent by the United Nations on the ground, stressing that the security safeguards envisaged by the agreement are collapsing, while at the same time the number of local conflicts, mobilizations, and political arrests is increasing.
Jonglei and Upper Nile as hotspots of new destabilization
The fighting in Jonglei in recent months is particularly worrying because that region has a long history of local and politically driven violence, and its instability easily spills over administrative borders. According to available reports, opposition forces linked to the SPLA-IO and allied fighters from the so-called White Army achieved certain gains on the ground, after which a strong response by government forces followed. It was precisely in that environment that airstrikes, the flight of civilians, and attacks on medical facilities took place.
Alongside the armed clashes, international organizations have been particularly alarmed by the rhetoric as well. In January, the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warned that inflammatory statements by high-ranking military figures and reports of force mobilization significantly increase the risk of mass violence against civilians. In a country with a history of ethnic crimes and impunity, such warnings do not sound like a diplomatic formality, but rather like a direct message that the patterns preceding the worst phases of the earlier war are once again visible.
The regional organization IGAD, one of the guarantors of the peace agreement, expressed deep concern at the end of January over the deterioration of security in Jonglei. A few weeks later, at an extraordinary summit, IGAD leaders called on the parties for urgent de-escalation, respect for the permanent ceasefire, and acceleration of transitional security arrangements. They also called for the release of detained officials if there are no credible and transparently conducted proceedings against them, as well as the restoration of the work of the security mechanisms envisaged by the agreement. The very fact that the possibility of the country’s return to war is being discussed at such a high regional level shows how serious the situation is.
The international community warns that there is no military solution
The United Nations has been sending exceptionally sharp messages in recent weeks. Secretary-General António Guterres called on all sides to stop the fighting, protect civilians, and allow safe humanitarian access, with the clear message that the crisis in South Sudan requires a political, not a military, solution. The UN Commission on Human Rights went a step further, assessing that political and military leaders are systematically undermining the 2018 peace agreement and exposing civilians to the risk of a new armed conflict and mass atrocities.
An important element of international concern is also the mandate of the UNMISS mission. According to Security Council Resolution 2779 of 2025, the mission is tasked with preventing a return to civil war, protecting civilians, supporting a peaceful political transition, and helping prepare free and peaceful elections in accordance with the revitalized agreement. But every new escalation on the ground, every attack on humanitarian workers or civilian objects, as well as every political move that undermines trust among the signatories of the agreement, further complicates the implementation of that mandate.
For international observers, it is especially sensitive that the country is formally approaching its first general elections while at the same time entering a new phase of violence. Elections in such an environment can become a tool of stabilization only if they are preceded by a minimum of security, a political agreement on the rules of the game, and credible institutions. Otherwise, the electoral process can become a new point of contention and a trigger for further violence, which in the South Sudanese case does not sound like a theoretical possibility, but like a real risk.
What follows for civilians and for the region
Civilians once again bear the greatest burden. Every new phase of conflict in South Sudan in practice means the same thing: the flight of the population, interruption of schooling, rising food prices, collapse of local trade, closure of clinics, and further weakening of trust in the state. In communities already exhausted by years of war and poverty, people very quickly remain without any mechanisms of protection other than their own flight. That is why international warnings about a possible return to a broader war cannot be read only as a geopolitical assessment, but also as an announcement of a new major civilian tragedy.
South Sudan is not an isolated case. The instability of that country directly affects the wider Horn of Africa and East Africa region, especially at a time when neighboring Sudan is already engulfed in a devastating war. Every new deterioration in security in South Sudan increases pressure on borders, humanitarian corridors, food markets, and regional diplomatic efforts. That is why calls for de-escalation today are not made only in the name of peace within one state, but also to prevent further regional spillover of the crisis.
According to the information currently available, the key question is no longer whether there is a danger of a broader conflict, but whether political and military actors can still stop in time the process of collapse of the agreement which for eight years, despite all its weaknesses, nevertheless represented the only formal barrier against a return to full war. While the number of displaced, missing, wounded, and hungry people is mounting on the ground, each new day without credible de-escalation further narrows the space for a peaceful solution and increases the possibility that the South Sudanese crisis will once again turn into one of the gravest security and humanitarian breakdowns on the African continent.
Sources:- - Associated Press – report on 26 missing Médecins Sans Frontières workers after attacks on facilities in Lankien and Pieri link
- - Associated Press – report on limited humanitarian access, displacement, and warnings of a return to a broader war link
- - United Nations, Security Council – discussion of 10 February 2026 on political deadlock and the risk of a return to civil war link
- - IGAD – statement on the extension of the transitional period until February 2027 and the postponement of elections to December 2026 link
- - IGAD – conclusions of the 43rd extraordinary summit on the need for urgent de-escalation and the implementation of security arrangements link
- - OHCHR – warning by the UN Commission on Human Rights on the risk of mass violence against civilians link
- - OHCHR – report that political and military leaders are undermining the 2018 peace agreement and pushing the country toward full war link
- - UN OCHA – Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026, overview of humanitarian needs and the pressure of arrivals from Sudan link
- - UNMISS – mission mandate and tasks related to civilian protection, the peace process, and elections link
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