Lt Gen Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki to be replaced after response to summer violence by UN Mission in South Sudan branded chaotic and ineffective

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The commander of the UN peacekeeping force in South Sudan has been dismissed by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, after a damning report showed that the mission failed to protect civilians during summer violence in Juba.

A UN special investigation found that a lack of leadership by the the UN mission in South Sudan (Unmiss), spearheaded by Lt Gen Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki, culminated in a “chaotic and ineffective response” during heavy fighting in the capital between 8 and 11 July.

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Peacekeepers abandoned their posts and failed to respond to pleas for help from aid workers under attack in a nearby hotel compound, according to a summary of the report.

The UN is now in discussions with member states on how to act on the report’s recommendation that countries involved in the policing aspect of the mission should send more female UN police officers, said a spokesperson for the secretary general.

“We will start reaching out to members states exactly on this question of more female police contingents,” he said, citing the the example of Liberia, where an all-female unit was hailed as a success.

However, there was no word on when Ondieki would be replaced, or by whom. The UN secretary general’s office said it was in touch with Kenya but a replacement had yet to be identified.

Unmiss has 16,000 troops deployed in South Sudan, where there has been fighting between troops loyal to the president, Salva Kiir, and his former deputy, Riek Machar, since December 2013.

“The special investigation found that Unmiss did not respond effectively to the violence due to an overall lack of leadership, preparedness and integration among the various components of the mission,” said UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric.

Chinese peacekeepers abandoned their positions at least twice and Nepalese peacekeepers failed to stop looting inside the UN compound, the inquiry found.

Ban said he was “deeply distressed by these findings” and “alarmed by the serious shortcomings” of the UN mission.

Dujarric said the UN chief had “asked for the immediate replacement of the force commander”, Ondieki. Other measures would follow, added Dujarric.

Ondieki, from Kenya, had been the force commander since May. UN mission chief Ellen Margrethe Løj of Denmark steps down at the end of November after more than two years in the job.

About a dozen aid workers and UN staff housed at the Terrain hotel compound were attacked by South Sudanese soldiers on 11 July. Peacekeepers just over 1km away failed to come to their aid despite multiple requests from China, Ethiopia, India and Nepal for forces to be dispatched.

The report noted that “each Unmiss contingent turned down the request, indicating their troops were fully committed”. During the attack, “civilians were subjected to and witnessed gross human rights violations, including murder, intimidation, sexual violence and acts amounting to torture perpetrated by armed government soldiers,” said the report.

The investigation, led by retired Dutch general Patrick Cammaert, was unable to verify allegations that peacekeepers did nothing to help women who were raped during the heavy fighting.

But in a later incident on 2 September, a woman was assaulted near the entrance to a UN compound “in plain sight” of the peacekeepers, the report said.

“Despite the woman’s screams, they did not react” and other UN staff intervened, the report added.

After the crisis, peacekeepers “continued to display a risk-averse posture unsuited to protecting civilians from sexual violence” and other attacks.

Unmiss soldiers refused to conduct foot patrols near UN bases and instead would “peer out from the tiny windows of armoured personnel carriers, an approach ill-suited to detecting perpetrators of sexual violence and engaging with communities to provide a sense of security”.

British ambassador Matthew Rycroft described the report as a “damning indictment” and said the security council as well as the UN system must draw lessons from the failures.

Evan Cinq-Mars, an expert on the UN and policy adviser at the US-based Center for Civilians in Conflict (Civic), said the report was particularly significant in naming the specific contingents who were found to have underperformed.

“In general, there needs to be more meaningful accountability when it comes to the failures of UN peacekeepers to protect civilians,” he said.

“That could include rotating out the contingents and individual personnel responsible. This should happen, and missions shouldn’t have the same peacekeepers deployed who have failed to protect civilians..”

“In general too with peacekeeping missions, there has been a larger issue of not having enough women in uniform. More have to be recruited and deployed.”

A Civic report on the violence in Juba found nothing new in the UN’s flawed response. The organisation previously investigated a February incident in which peacekeepers from Ethiopia, India and Rwanda stood by as government soldiers attacked another protection of civilians site in the northern town of Malakal, killing at least 30 people.

The UN security council is set to discuss the crisis in South Sudan on 17 November.



In July, community leaders also reported that more than 120 women were raped over the course of a few days, a figure that tallied with the number of cases documented by the UN. Several rape survivors said soldiers camped along the road leading past the UN camp attacked women. Most of the women were members of the Nuer community, the ethnic group of opposition leader Machar.