In its new investigative brief, “Fueling Atrocities: Oil and War in South Sudan,” Enough’s investigative initiative, The Sentry, reports on a set of documents that describe how South Sudan’s elite is using the country’s oil wealth to get rich and terrorize civilians.
These documents appear to indicate how funds from South Sudan’s state oil company, Nile Petroleum Corporation (Nilepet), helped to fund militias responsible for horrific acts of violence and also to pay several companies partially owned by family members of top officials responsible for funding government-aligned militia or military commanders.
Key Information Contained in the Documents:
- More than $80 million was recorded as paid to South Sudanese politicians, military officials, government agencies, and companies owned by politicians and members of their families who were paid for services such as military transport and logistics to forces implicated in atrocities.
- South Sudan’s petroleum ministry assisted in the provision of food, fuel, satellite phone airtime and money to a group of militias in Upper Nile state. The militias are reportedly responsible for destroying villages and attacks against civilians, including a February 2016 attack against civilians at a U.N. site in Malakal that left dozens dead.
The petroleum sector is meant to be the source of South Sudan’s future. Instead, the documents reviewed by The Sentry suggest oil is intimately linked to violence. Fortunately, the financial realities of the international oil business and the potential for enhanced governance measures mean that action can be taken, and the promise of the sector realized.
For full details, read the brief here.