Editor's Note: This op-ed originally appeared on CNN.com on June 25, 2015 and was written by Satellite Sentinel Project co-founders George Clooney and John Prendergast and Enough Project Policy Analyst Akshaya Kumar. Their piece argues that since greed is driving the calculations of South Sudan’s government and rebel leaders, the surest route to peace is by hitting them in their wallets with biting sanctions.
The scale of the crisis facing South Sudan is hard to comprehend — 2 million people have been displaced as the country has tumbled back into a greed-driven war that has also left almost half the population without enough food to eat.
To stop the death spiral, the United States and South Sudan's neighbors must urgently fashion a new approach to peacemaking that creates a more effective peace process, one with serious, biting consequences for those South Sudanese government and rebel leaders who continue to fan the flames of war and who are completely insulated from the suffering of their people.
With this in mind, President Barack Obama's visit to Kenya and Ethiopia next month provides a golden opportunity to help rescue one of the central legacies of his administration in Africa: American support for the creation of the world's newest state…
Read the full op-ed on CNN.com
Image: South Sudan's President Salva Kiir, left, shakes hands with rebel leader and former vice president Riek Machar, right, after signing an agreement at the end of talks in Arusha, Tanzania; January 21, 2015. (AP Photo)