PaanLuel Wël Media Ltd – South Sudan

"We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing" By Konstantin Josef Jireček, a Czech historian, diplomat and slavist.

THINK AGAIN: South Sudan needs new ideas, not a UN-imposed government

It’s also not a given that the UN or the African Union (AU), or some combination thereof, will actually govern any better. ‘The fact that people think it is okay to say things like that shows the level of condescension that still dominates the intervention realm. Saying to people who fought for more than 50 years for the right to self-rule that they are not capable of doing so, reeks of arrogance and hypocrisy’ said Lauren Hutton, an independent consultant with the ISS.

‘But even more so, Lyman and others assume that they (the UN and/or the AU) know how to run the country better than South Sudan’s current leaders.’

Hutton suggests that the international community would be better served by increasing humanitarian assistance, and by rethinking their commitment to the current political balance in the country (so often reduced by outsiders to the relationship between President Salva Kiir and his sometimes-deputy Riek Machar).

While South Sudan is undoubtedly in need of new ideas, Lyman and Knopf’s radical proposal to replace the government with international trustees is unwieldy and unworkable in practice. Back to the drawing board.

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