10 July 2014 - The African Union (AU) General Assembly today extended by three months the mandate of its Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan to allow for more extensive consultations, a statement issued by the AU in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa said.

The five-member Commission, headed by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, was established by the AU Peace and Security Council as a response to the crisis in South Sudan.

It is tasked with investigating violations of human rights and humanitarian law committed during the crisis and making recommendations relating to healing, reconciliation, accountability, and institutional reforms.

An Interim Report presented to the Assembly highlights findings and observations, but “does not pronounce itself definitively on many key issues considered (and)… is by no means complete or conclusive”.

The Commission noted while the first ceasefire agreements signed on 23 January was largely ignored, the second signed on 9 May has held tenuously, with some breaches routinely recorded by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Monitoring and Verification Mission.

Welcoming the decision of the IGAD Heads of State to deploy a regional force, the Commission urged that the process should be fast tracked, while taking into account requisite sensitivities in putting together such a multinational force. The Commission also urged allied forces to begin withdrawal from South Sudan to allow deployment of the IGAD force.

“The Commission also urges an end to any form of military support to the belligerents that fuel and encourage hardening of positions and continuation of hostilities” the report said. “This will encourage a speedy resolution of the crisis.”

The Commission also found that while intense and widespread levels of violence witnessed in early months of the crisis are no longer manifest, incidents of violence, deaths and destruction of property continue in various parts of the four states that were the main scenes of such violence.

“There is palpable tension and what can be described as an “uneasy peace” in many parts of the four states that the Commission was able to visit,” the report said. It attributed this to survivors experience with violence; the ever-present threat of violence, ineffective measures to guarantee safety of all, ethnic animosity arising out of historical grievances and the delay in reaching comprehensive political settlement in the on-going mediation process.

The Commission urged the international community to increase funding and speed up efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to the affected communities. It also urged warring parties to continue abiding by commitments to allow unhindered access to humanitarian agencies.

“While the Commission is still in the process of collecting information and investigating various allegations of human rights violations and violations of humanitarian law, and is not yet in a position to pronounce itself definitively on whether some of these amount to international crimes, the devastation of the armed conflict is manifest in some of the areas visited,” the report said.