South Sudan has called on the United Nations to lift the arms embargo on the country as its battalion of 750 soldiers is deployed without firearms in the city of Malakal in South Sudan's Upper Nile state, media reported, citing the country's Minister of Information, Communication, Technology and Postal Services, Michael Makuei Lueth.
"We are deploying them without arms because we have no arms, the UN Security Council decided to pass a resolution on the arms embargo on South Sudan, so we are unable to acquire arms for our forces. It is the international community that insisted and said that you must deploy these forces; we have been saying we cannot deploy them without arms," Makuei told journalists after the weekly cabinet meeting.
According to Makuei, the troops, which were deployed in Upper Nile on Wednesday, will be transferred to South Sudan's capital, Juba, to be integrated with other forces after training, the media reported.
UN sanctions on South Sudan, imposed in 2018 following clashes between the South Sudanese TGNU and government opposition forces that began in 2013, include asset freezes and travel bans in addition to the arms embargo, which was extended for another year in May.
In 2018, the parties to the conflict signed a peace agreement requiring the transitional government to train and deploy a total of 83,000 unified forces, including police, wildlife, intelligence, and military personnel. A total of 53,000 members of the joint forces reportedly graduated last August.
The deployment of the unified forces is crucial as they are expected to provide security during the country's elections, which are scheduled for December 2024 at the end of the current transitional period, the media noted.
Earlier, in an exclusive interview with Sputnik Africa in late September, South Sudan's Foreign Minister James Pitia Morgan stressed that the country's armed forces cannot provide security on its territory "with sticks."