An aggrieved South Sudanese elderly woman | Credit | Amnesty International

A prominent Kenyan female lawyer has asked the regional governments to discourage South Sudanese leaders from prolonging the ‘lucrative’ conflict.

According to the UN, nearly 7 million people need emergency aid such as food, water and basic medicines due to the protracted civil war in the country.

Almost 2.5 million people have been forced to seek refuge in the neighboring countries, with Uganda alone hosting over one million refugees.

The violence is in its fifth year, and has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

On Wednesday, the peace talks collapsed after the warring parties rejected IGAD’s bridging proposal during the second round of high-level revitalization forum which ended in Addis Ababa.

In an article published on the Daily Nation newspaper on 25 May, Josephine Mong’are likened the South Sudan leaders’ attitude to that of the biblical Cain.

Recent Global Witness report shows that South Sudan’s state-owned oil company, the Nile Petroleum Corporation (Nilepet), has been captured by predatory elites at the heart of the country’s brutal civil war.

After killing his brother Abel, God asked Cain the whereabouts of his brother and he replied, saying: “Am I my brothers’ keeper?”

“It is common to see these makers of war comfortable in the high-end residential areas of their host countries,” Ms Mong’are writes.

In contrast to this luxurious lifestyle, she continues, “the citizens face a bleak existence devoid of the basic necessities that guarantee a dignified life.”

Ms Mong’are, the Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida-Kenya) chairperson, called upon neighboring authorities to ensure that illegally obtained wealth is not channeled through their countries and then used to finance the war in South Sudan.