South Sudan's Leaders Are Racing to Elections Over 84 Dead Civilians

Eighty-four people. That is the reported death toll from two days of violence in Akop Payam, Tonj North County, Warrap State, on 26 and 27 October. Eighty-four human beings went to sleep in their homes and did not wake up. Sixty more were injured. Markets were set on fire. Cattle were driven off. And somewhere in Juba, the conversation is about dates on a calendar.

We have to ask the question plainly. How many funerals must South Sudan hold before its leaders accept that a voting booth cannot protect people who are still being buried?

The attack did not come from nowhere. State authorities say the attackers included armed youth from Mayom County in Unity State and sections of Alabek Payam in Warrap. They raided the Majak-kou cattle camp. They burned the markets of Athieng-puol and Rual-malith and set fire to homes in the villages around them. Two days earlier, on 24 October, eight civilians were reportedly killed in Mading-Juer. Taken together, these are not isolated incidents. They are a pattern. In August, at least 60 people were killed and 50 injured in the same area. Warrap is bleeding in a cycle that never seems to end, and every cycle leaves more graves and fewer reasons to believe the state is in charge.

Cattle raids in South Sudan are rooted in real grievances: competition over grazing land, bride price, and the cow as a measure of family wealth. But the raids have become something far deadlier. Young men now move in armed groups across state lines with rifles that should never have reached their hands. When a cattle dispute becomes a massacre, the cause is not only tradition. It is an armory that no one has managed to lock. It is also a state that has failed for years to disarm its own population or to prosecute the men who arm them.

On 27 October, the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan told the UN General Assembly what Juba would rather not hear. The Commission, chaired by Yasmin Sooka, warned that power is concentrated in the executive, that fighting has resumed, and that tens of thousands of combatants have never been merged into a single, unified command. Its August assessment found that most of the risk factors listed in the UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes are present and getting worse. In plain language: the warning signs of mass atrocity are flashing, and the government is pressing the accelerator toward an election that could tip the country back into war. Sooka put it well. A peaceful democracy cannot be built on fear and exclusion, yet the very safeguards meant to prevent a return to war are being dismantled as the vote approaches.

Consider what that means for an ordinary woman in Tonj North. She is supposed to register to vote in a county where her neighbours have just been killed, where the market that fed her family is ash, and where the armed youth who did it are still free. Her right to choose a government depends on whether she can walk to a registration point without being shot. Right now, the honest answer is no. A rushed election under these conditions does not hand her a voice. It hands her a risk.

South Sudan is not a monolith, and its people are not defined by their worst weeks. This is a country that won its independence in 2011 after decades of fighting and then tore itself apart within two years. The 2018 Revitalized Agreement promised a unified army, a transitional government, and a path to elections. Those promises have been repeatedly delayed. Each delay has been paid for in civilian blood, while the political class argues about timetables and seats.

Atrocity is not a regional curse that Africans must accept with a shrug. The same UN machinery now documenting horrors in Gaza and Nicaragua is telling us what the rules are: no state gets to hide behind sovereignty while its people are slaughtered. The West loves to recite that principle when it suits them. We should hold them to it. And we should hold ourselves to it first, because Warrap's dead are our dead, and African institutions have a duty that cannot be outsourced to Geneva or New York.

So what must change? First, the African Union's Peace and Security Council and IGAD should stop issuing statements and start acting. That means a public, time-bound roadmap with clear benchmarks. Elections should proceed only when the conditions for credibility exist: a unified command structure, verified disarmament in the hotspots, secure voter registration in every county, and a judiciary able to prosecute militia leaders regardless of their political connections. Second, the government must arrest and prosecute those behind the Akop Payam and Mading-Juer killings. Impunity is the oxygen of the next massacre. Third, local peace committees, faith leaders, and women's groups in Warrap and Unity must be funded and protected as the first line of defence against revenge killings.

Africa has shown what a better path looks like. Ghana's 2024 elections produced a peaceful transfer of power that its citizens could trust. In Senegal, when President Macky Sall tried to postpone the 2024 vote, the Constitutional Council ruled against him, and the country's institutions held. Botswana built prosperity on secure property rights, transparent public finance, and a professional civil service. Mauritius built its economy on the rule of law and open markets. None of these countries are perfect. All of them proved that when courts are independent, armies answer to civilians, and markets reward honest work, people stop killing each other over cattle and start building something to protect.

Here is what we demand. We demand that Juba stop treating the December vote as a deadline and start treating it as a test it can only pass with safe streets and a unified army. We demand that the AU and IGAD send envoys to Warrap now, not after the next funeral. We demand that every donor funding South Sudan's elections attach the same condition: no ballot is worth a single life. And we demand that you, reading this from Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, or Johannesburg, refuse to let 84 deaths slide into the back pages. Share this. Ask your MP what your government is saying in the Peace and Security Council. Write to the AU. Make it impossible for the next massacre to be forgotten by Wednesday.

Eighty-four people were killed in Warrap in two days. Their names deserve more than a statistic. They deserve justice, and a country that finally keeps its promises.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB