South sudans lethal cocktail of failed governance, ethnic division, hunger and disease threatens millions of lives. It represents a tragic failure on the part of the rulers of africas newest country, and on the part of the United Nations mission in south sudan which has brought neither peace or anything else. My my guest is the head of that mission, david shearer. What hope there is for the people of south sudan . David shearer, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you. Do you think the world is paying heed to the agonies and suffering of the people of south sudan . I think increasingly so, but there is a competition, obviously, for airtime in terms of disasters around the world. South sudan sometimes, despite the enormous amount of tragedy, sometimes falls off the stage. Right now, there are more than half the population of south sudan in need of food aid. One third of the country is displaced, either in other countries or internally displaced. And the conflict continues on. And this is not a disaster that is borne out of drought. It is a disaster that is borne out of conflict. It is man made. It is a man made catastrophe. The un Agency Responsible for food and agriculture has talked about famine. A word which is always used with great care. Is it justified in south sudan today . They did careful analysis of the situation in south sudan and declared one particular area, a number of counties, in a famine zone. They believe 100,000 people in the area were likely to die unless there was an enormous amount of food put into the area. That has happened to some degree and the numbers have come down from 100,000 down to about 80,000. But around the rest of sudan, that has risen. Particular in now, with the onset of the rainy season. Between now, when they plant, and when they harvest their food, there is a very, very big and worrying gap. Lets get back to the point that it is a man made disaster. You sit there in the capital, responsible for the un mission. There, you are supposed to be there protecting the people of south sudan. And you cannot, because you are only able to address the symptoms, not the cause of south sudans problem. And the cause is total political dysfunction. And that is beyond your ability to fix. I have to say that what we do do in south sudan, and it is more than half of our mandate to protect civilians, and we have 230,000 people either inside our bases or right alongside them, who we. Who we are protecting. Or not, as the case may be . Because we can go through the different case studies, last year, the year before, where people inside those camps, under your protection, have been attacked and killed. Some, yes. And i am not trying to defend what happened. But overwhelmingly, 230,000 people have chosen to come inside our bases, and are alive today because we are there. So the un, through its work, has saved Tens Of Thousands of people. There is absolutely no doubt about that. Have we let, on occasion, have there been instances where people have been killed . Yes. But overwhelmingly, a lot of People Choose to be there. I dont think that is enough. 230,000 is the huge number. But we have around 2 Million People who are displaced across south sudan, and our real role, now, is to get beyond our bases and get out into those areas and provide some degree of protection or comfort for those people who are outside. Its one of the biggest problems you face, the fact that the president of the country, salva Kiir Mayardit, and we have had him on the programme, before. We had him here during a previous crisis a couple of years ago, but it is worse now. Salva Kiir Mayardit does not really want you and your forces in his country. It is a complicated situation. I think for the government of south sudan, on the one hand, they are proud, they got their independence after a0 years of fighting. The thought that the un needs to be there is a bit of an anathema to them. 0n the other hand, they realise that we are mandated to be here and need to be there. It is a relationship we have to manage carefully. But they also recognise that if the un was not better, there would be Tens Of Thousands of people who would not get food aid, that would not be protected, that would not be able to get water or medical supplies, et cetera. So they need us and we need to work carefully with them at the same time. Salva Kiir Mayardit is at war with his former Vice President , the other man who has lived through the Liberation Struggle and independence of south sudan, riek machar, one representing one particular tribal grouping, that is the dinka, and riek machar represents the other group. Everything you are talking to me about is a plaster on a wound that continues to fester. There is no doubt that if we want to solve the german problem, the cholera problem, of which are growing number of cases. A year ago, riek machar and salva Kiir Mayardit were sitting down to discuss a peace deal. There was a lot of hope that would bring about peace. We have to have some sort of settlement. And within days of the meeting, salva Kiir Mayardits forces were bombing riek machars people and they were on the run on leaving the country. It blew up. Who was responsible for that depends on who you speak to. In a sense is it not your duty, as the uns top representative, the Special Envoy of the un to south sudan, at some point you will have to make some calls and you say to your boss and to the world that this is the man who is responsible for the situation in south sudan today. So why dont you tell me right now who you believe carries the responsibility . I think right now we need to be looking forward in terms of how we get out of this, rather than looking backwards and thinking about who did what to whom. And it depends on who you speak to. Right now, it is after the Conflict Injuly last year, when everything, again, to do nothing. Salva Kiir Mayardit remained the president. Riek machar is currently in south africa. There was, i believe, a feeling around the region, and it was the region that brought these two together, are they peace deal. To enable salva kiir to be president and to try and resolve the conflict as it went along. Right now, certainly, the government of south sudan is very strong. And the opposition is no longerjust riek machar. It has also broken into other groups. And so it has become more complicated than it was before. So go backwards is not an option. It is about going forwards. Are you talking to riek machar yourself . Not myself. My my offsider who is the on Border Force Dinan south sudan went down to speak with him about five or six weeks ago. Envoy for Sudan And South sudan. Lets think deeply about your mission. The mandate has changed. In 2013, it was about ambitious plans to try and form a new state, to help build a Civil Society of functioning democracy. That is what the un appeared to believe could be done in south sudan. In the last couple of years, much more focused on that, as you call it, the core job of protecting civilians in a time of terrible civil strife. The problem is yourforces do not appear to be able to do thatjob. Partly because, to quote one un official in south sudan, admittedly anonymous, he said, the truth is, nobody wants to die for south sudan in the un force. And that is a brutal truth, isnt it . Nobody wants to die. And i do not want anybody to die. Lets be absolutely clear. You know what i mean, though. The point is that your forces go, when push comes to shove, whether it be the terrible Incident Injuba last year, when your forces stood by as killings occurred. And there was another case in a different camp, and 2015, as civilians were killed, more than 30, your forces stood by. They are not prepared to put their own lives on the line to save civilians. Injuly last year, there was a lot of criticism about the un and the way that it responded. Injuly last year, in july last year, There Injuly Last year, there was a lot of criticism about the United Nations and the way it responded. I think a lot of it was justified. I came in after that time. I came in after those events. We brought in a retired general, and he led a team of people who looked very intensively at how the un responded to what happened. And we were found to be wanting. And we set in play a whole series of measures to try and address that. When i came in, i picked that up to take those measures forward, and then brought the general back in again to say, now, look at us, and see if we are better than when you came in a few months ago. And i think we reported back to the Security Council on this, because the Security Council was also anxious to hear how we had got on. I think we have addressed many of the issues. But look, it is an ongoing thing. We have to be more robust. And i think we are. And we need to be more prepared. We need to have a great degree of looking forward and trying to anticipate what is happening and be ready for that. And so i think there is a, certainly within the mission, now, we are better placed than we were last year. But with respect, if you look at the timeline, after the terrible events of last year, the un decided it needed to beef up its military and Police Presence with at least 4000 extra personnel. Salva Kiir Mayardit, and you refuse to take sides, earlier on, when i invited you to ascribe responsibility to different players, salva Kiir Mayardit has over the months blocked and thwarted your desire to expand your military presence. We have had difficulty getting people in. There is no doubt about that. A lot of it has been bureaucratic. You wonder how much of what is bureaucracy or something else. So why dont you call them out . Say to salva kiir that this is unacceptable, and there will be consequences if you dont allow our extra Military Force in. We have. Weve reported the Security Council in public. I have given various interviews where i have said we need to have his Regional Protection force coming. But what has happened . Its still slow. But look, were doing what we can. We have the elements on the ground. And we are finding, as of the last few weeks, its becoming easier and easier. I want to come back to something you said before, because i think there is an important issue, here, and that is about the robustness of the response. Of course nobody wants to die in south sudan. We dont expect that. But right now, if we are. If i send a patrol down to a particular area, and at a checkpoint, and the checkpoints says you cannot come through, the Standing Instruction is do not turn around. You stay there. And we had patrols stop at checkpoints overnight, one day, two days, or longer, until they are able to get through. A few weeks ago, the Mongolian Group had a checkpoint, weapons were cocked, and they were told that they couldnt come through. They radioed back to the base, and they were told that they would turn around, but not in five minutes. They turned around in 30 minutes, and the next day they went back and got through. This is the more robust type of peacekeeping that we want to see. But i want to say. People are still dying. Civilians are dying every day. Just a minute. That is highly, highly dangerous brinkmanship. Weve got two sides with their weapons cocked against each other. In order for us to perform our mandate, i guess we could machine gun our way through, but what would happen the next day . The next day we would be at war with the groups that are in front of us. And we would suffer casualties, and we would not be able to do the job that we have been sent out to do. So this is a very delicate situation in terms of peacekeeping. This is peacekeeping. It is not warmaking. It is not invasion. It is peacekeeping. Try to get to civilians are you try to protect and in the best way you possibly can. Is it possible to talk about peacekeeping when it seems to many independent observers on the ground that there are players in this south sudanese conflict who are guilty of war crimes and Crimes Against Humanity . I think you can, but the point for us is to be able to get to the places that we need to go. And by being present, we stop a lot of the atrocities that are going on, from actually being carried out. We are able to monitor and record some of those atrocities, perhaps for future times and some of those people might be able to be held to account. We are enabling for humanitarian supplies to be able to brought into an area that they otherwise would not be able to get into. I think the peacekeeping role, there is no doubt, it is literally saving the lives of thousands of people. Butjust to be clear about it, the un said in december 2016, a process of Ethnic Cleansing is under way in parts of south sudan. Is that your beliefs today, that Ethnic Cleansing is happening in the country which you, for the un, are responsible for, where you sit with a force of 17,000 or so Military Personnel and you are unable to stop Ethnic Cleansing continuing . The killings that are going on, and theres a multitude of them every part of south sudan is a bit different there is an ethnic dimension to them. Around that time that report came out, there was talk about genocide and that was a word that scared people and certainly got the attention of the international community. People have talked about rwanda, people have said south sudan has all of the components, the ingredients, that could push it Over The Edge to be the worlds next rwanda style catastrophe, genocidal catastrophe. I worked in rwanda just after the genocide so i know what absolute failure looks like. My feeling is that, yes, there are atrocities that are being carried out that are ethnically inspired, but were not seeing something that i would say is an organised Political Campaign to eliminate one group or another. None of this is easy, but it seems to me you have a particularly difficult set of choices to make, partly about the way you approach salva kiir, the president. I have already talked about it a little bit. John kerry, before the Obama Administration left office, when he was addressing the south sudan crisis, he made it Crystal Clear as us Secretary Of State that us assistance in its total i think more than 1. 6 billion over the last six years he said it was not unconditional. We are not going to continue to fill this void, he said, were not going to provide help incessantly if the parties involved are not willing to accept responsibility and do things to deliver peace for their people. Is it time to reassess aid and assistance to south sudan . I hope not, quite frankly, because if we cut back on aid, the only people who lose are the people who have nothing to do with the conflict, who are basically innocent bystanders, who are citizens that have gone through years and years of war, who will ultimately perish. But maybe the aid is simply allowing the players to perpetuate the cycle of conflict and violence. And frankly, we know from the work of ngos on the ground, some people are enriching themselves at the very same time as millions of their fellow citizens are going hungry and facing starvation. I think that if we cut back on food aid, then there is going to be a direct correlation with the number of people who die. It is very, very simple. If we do that, that is a decision. Will it be about a political end . No, i do not think so. I actually think that those people who are fighting do to depend on food aid. The food aid goes, overwhelmingly there might be some thats been redirected to military but overwhelmingly. Is there . I mean, lets be blunt about it. In every conflict i have worked in around of the world, the military always eat first. So lets face it, that is happening but at the same time, the overwhelming amount of food aid that goes into south sudan goes to those people who need it. If you turned the tap off, then will that change the behaviour of the leaders of south sudan . I dont think so. I think we will be in exactly the same situation only with a whole lot of other people dead. Nobody would dispute, i think, the fact that today south sudan is a failing state. It is the worlds newest, youngest nation but it is failing and failing badly. There is an idea abroad amongst many who look and care about south sudan that the only and best way of saving the people of south sudan is to put the country, at least temporarily into some form of Un Trusteeship. Now, you are the uns guy in south sudan, youve seen the failings and the dysfunction of government there, is the best solution may be to look what happened in kosovo or east timor, and put this new country under some form of Un Trusteeship . There is quite a bit of talk about that but i have never seen somebody go beyond the idea through the implications of what that would mean on the ground. First of all, the un is not talking about that and i certainly am not. I was in iraq where, effectively, there was a kind of trusteeship when the us went in it was hugely problematic. I was also in kosovo, a small country and it was problematic there but at least it was more containable. South sudan is an immense country with a very proud people who believe they thought a ao year plus civil war in order to gain their independence, only now to have it taken away and given to the un. I think that would. Millions are at risk. Absolutely but more millions could be at risk by going down a road where we have not thought out the repercu