Sec. 2. Findings

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Congress finds the following: The Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed on January 9, 2005, provided the framework for a referendum to determine the status of southern Sudan in 2011, in which approximately 99 percent of voters chose independence from Sudan. Since the onset of the civil war in the Republic of South Sudan, in December 2013, more than 50,000 South Sudanese citizens have been killed and 1,800,000 have been internally displaced, including roughly 200,000 who have sought refuge at civilian protection sites established by the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS).

More than 920,000 refugees from South Sudan have fled to neighboring countries to seek asylum. Throughout the course of the civil war, both government and opposition forces have been implicated in the recruitment of more than 16,000 child soldiers, and have been found culpable in other egregious human rights violations, including ethnically targeted rape and killing. According to recent figures from the United Nations and from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network led by the United States Agency for International Development, 4,800,000 people in South Sudan are experiencing crisis-level food insecurity, and a quarter of a million children are facing severe malnutrition.

Emergency acute food insecurity is widespread in parts of the Greater Upper Nile and Greater Bahr el Ghazal regions of South Sudan, while some households in Northern Bahr el Ghazal are on the brink of famine. Since December 2013, 59 aid workers have been killed in South Sudan. Despite the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan signed on August 17, 2015, which came into effect on August 26, 2015, violent clashes employing tanks, helicopter gunships, and heavy weaponry have continued throughout the country that routinely and indiscriminately affect civilian neighborhoods and United Nations compounds.

In February 2016, forces from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army

(SPLA)attacked a civilian protection site established by UNMISS in Malakal, killing up to 65 people, injuring over 100, and displacing roughly 30,000. The forces also burned down 3,700 shelters across one-third of the site. A report by the United Nations Headquarters Board of Inquiry later found that UNMISS failed to prepare for or mitigate the attack and failed at all levels to manage the crisis effectively. In July 2016, violence initiated by SPLA forces and forces from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-In-Opposition (SPLA–IO) in Juba involved an attack in which SPLA forces fired over 50 rounds at an armored United States embassy vehicle, an attack on the Terrain compound in which SPLA soldiers sexually assaulted, beat, and raped aid workers, reportedly targeting Americans, and other attacks on United Nations compounds and UNMISS civilan protection sites. The violence resulted in the deaths of 300 people, including two United Nations peacekeepers and two employees of Doctors Without Borders.