A United Nations Commission warned Thursday that South Sudan's long-awaited elections set for December could reignite conflict and heighten the risk of atrocities.
The warning comes after government said it intends to hold the country's first-ever elections, almost 15 years after it achieved independence.
But the impoverished nation has seen increasing violence between forces allied to long-time rivals President Salva Kiir and imprisoned opposition leader Riek Machar, threatening to unravel a peace deal signed in 2018.
The U.N.-appointed Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said that in the run-up to polls, "multiple risk factors for atrocity crimes are converging."
"Elections held without a strategy for democratic consolidation and preventing national schisms could instead fuel renewed conflict," it warned in a report.
South Sudan has twice delayed the elections – in 2022 and 2024 – as it struggled to establish institutions amid rampant corruption and insecurity.
The U.N. report said the country was now "at one of its most dangerous points," with a "worsening political, security, humanitarian and human rights situation."
Yasmin Sooka, chair of the commission, said South Sudan's population deserved a genuine election, but "not one that puts their lives at risk."
Following independence in 2011, Kiir and Machar fought a civil war from 2013 to 2018 that claimed an estimated 400,000 lives.
The power-sharing agreement that ended the war has all but collapsed, with Machar and several of his allies jailed last year.
Elections risk "reinforcing, rather than resolving, the underlying drivers of conflict," the report said.
One of the poorest nations in the world, South Sudan also faces aid cuts by Western donors, with the U.N. warning earlier this month that it may have to end food assistance to refugees within weeks.
