Due to financial difficulties, for the third year running, South Sudan will not be celebrating its independence anniversary.
Head of the independence committee, Abdun Agau, said that on July 9 due to financial constraints they would not celebrate their independence day.
South Sudan won independence from Sudan in 2011 after more than two decades of civil war but again plunged into conflict in December 2013 after President Salva Kiir sacked his former Vice President Riek Machar, leaving the youngest nation in economic turmoil as conflict disrupted oil production, the main foreign currency earner.
South Sudan economy has been hit hard amid hyperinflation due to the more than four years of conflict which has also created one of the fastest growing refugee crises in the world.
President Kiir and Machar, the leader of the main rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army held talks on June 28 in Khartoum in a bid to revive the weakened 2015 peace agreement.
Kirr and Machar agreed to the permanent ceasefire mediated by the Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development.
The 2015 peace agreement was shattered when the warring parties renewed fighting in July 2016 in the capital, forcing rebel leader Riek Machar to flee into exile.
The UN estimates that about four million South Sudanese have been displaced internally and externally.
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