Geneva — A new report on South Sudan rebukes the country’s political elites for systemic government corruption and brazen predation, and the UN Human Rights Commission says it must be urgently addressed.
Issued on Sept. 16, the report is titled Plundering a Nation: How Rampant Corruption Unleashed a Human Rights Crisis in South Sudan.
The report is based on two years of independent investigations and analysis by the commission on the world’s newest country.
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It documents how oil and non-oil revenues are siphoned off through opaque off-budget schemes and politically connected contracts while millions of South Sudanese are denied basic services.
“Our report tells the story of the plundering of a nation: corruption is not incidental, it is the engine of South Sudan’s decline,” said Yasmin Sooka, chairperson of the commission on South Sudan, a South African human rights lawyer.
She said the plunder in South Sudan is driving hunger, collapsing health systems, and causing preventable deaths, as well as fuelling deadly armed conflict over resources.
South Sudan is the world’s newest nation and Africa’s 54th country, founded in 2011 after separating from Sudan.
Its independence marked the end of Africa’s longest civil war, although conflict has not ended in the region since it gained its independence.
Sooka said the suffering of South Sudanese civilians is a direct consequence of the brazen plundering of public revenues since independence.
The Commission’s analysis of official data shows that the South Sudanese government’s oil inflows alone have exceeded $25.2 billion since 2011 – an enormous sum in one of the world’s poorest countries.
– Diverting oil revenues
Yet it says systemic corruption and diversion of both oil and non-oil revenues mean hardly any money reaches essential services.
“The education, public health, and justice systems are in crisis,” says the Commission.
Most civil servants are underpaid or unpaid. International donors now spend more on South Sudan’s basic services than the government itself, and the country ranks at the bottom of both the UN Human Development Index and the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index.
“Instead of directing national wealth toward serving the population, the country’s political leaders have systematically diverted oil and non-oil revenues, through corruption and unaccountable schemes entrenched throughout government,” said commissioner Barney Afako.
“South Sudan’s ability to manage economic constraints, absorb shocks, and allocate resources to fulfil the human rights of citizens has been significantly impeded by corruption. Moreover, fiscal and accountability reforms envisaged under the Revitalized Peace Agreement remain unimplemented, while impunity for corruption prevails.”
The report highlights corruption schemes, including the ‘Oil for Roads’ programme, which funnelled an estimated $2.2 billion off-budget into political patronage networks.
The scheme implicates Benjamin Bol Mel, appointed as Vice President of South Sudan in February 2025, whose companies failed to deliver most of the promised roads.
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It also details schemes by Crawford Capital Ltd in non-oil revenue collections, where little of the taxes reach government budgets, even as illegal levies on humanitarian actors obstruct critical food aid operations.
On Sept. 11, 2025, the government announced charges against First Vice President Riek Machar, who had been arbitrarily detained since March 2025.
His opposition party has fractured, with many key leaders jailed or exiled.
Meanwhile, the president’s daughter and Vice President Bol Mel’s wife have been elevated to senior government positions.
The report sets out 54 recommendations to the Government of South Sudan for ending impunity for corruption, strengthening accountability, and urgently prioritizing the population’s basic needs in national budgets and public spending processes.
