Widespread communal and inter-communal violence is threatening the implementation of a peace agreement in South Sudan.

About 300 people were killed in inter-communal violence across the country between June and July, according to media reports.

“The peace agreement in South Sudan is in a critical condition. If you look into the peace agreement, there is nothing moving. People are still losing their lives on a daily basis and the government is not coming up with measures that will control the inter-communal violence,” Wodcan Saviour Lazarus, human rights activist and head of the Juba Base Support Peace Initiative Development Organization, told Anadolu Agency.

He said hundreds have been killed in two months and that has been happening since the signing of the peace deal in 2018.

“The level of violence taking place across the country is extremely high. People are killing themselves, houses are burned and people are still running for refuge. That is a really bad situation and if not seen carefully, the peace agreement will collapse anytime because these communities are the center of peace and if they are not in peace, the country will not realize peace,” he said.

“We have a few months remaining to complete the transitional period. We can’t talk about elections and the violence is high. This will take people back to zero. The parties are not event condemning the violence.”

He urged the government to put more effort into getting rid of inter-communal violence.

“I want these politicians to do more to bring total peace to our country. There is no need for our people to continue losing their lives, People have to wake up and get rid of this communal violence in the country. The politicians have to take the lead to address the violence and others will follow them. They were once connected to the community,” said Lazarus.

He said there is a threat to the peace agreement if others are not happy.

At least 230 civilians have been confirmed dead following communal clashes that erupted between June 20 and July 6, Emmanuel Epone Lolimo, commissioner of Kapoeta North County, told Anadolu Agency.

He said clashes in the Lokoromae cattle camp erupted after the Tennet, Buya and Murle communities combined forces to attack the Toposa community.

Information and Communication Minister Michael Makuei Lueth said the government is aware of rising inter-communal violence and authorities have taken steps to quell the situation.

“We have already taken action; the president has already directed the movement of forces to the areas concerned. The governor who is the man responsible in the state is responding and security forces have been sent there to arrest the situation,” he told Anadolu Agency.

President Salva Kiir Mayardit acknowledged in his Independence Day speech recently that inter-communal violence risks reversing nascent peace gains achieved in the implementation of the 2018 revitalized peace deal. - Benjamin Takpiny, Anadolu Agency

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Getty Images/Photo Courtesy  

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have been accused of “cruelty and immorality” for promising more Rwanda-style deals to remove asylum seekers from the UK, as charities claimed the pair were pandering to party members’ hardline views.

Amnesty International led criticism of immigration plans announced over the weekend by the Tory leadership candidates, with a warning the “dreadful” pledges would come at “great human and financial cost”. 

Related: Truss v Sunak: how do Tory PM contenders differ on policy?

Other human rights groups, opposition parties and the rightwing Adam Smith Institute think-tank also condemned the proposals on grounds ranging from ethics to the “crippling costs”.

Hostile briefings by the two camps intensified over the weekend as they prepared for a crunch TV debate hosted by the BBC on Monday evening, with ballot papers set to drop through members’ letterboxes in just over week.

Both promised to push ahead with the planto send hundreds of asylum seekers to Rwanda, which stalled last month after an intervention by the European convention on human rights.

Sunak said he would do “whatever it takes” to get the stalled Rwanda plan “off the ground and operating at scale” and vowed to pursue more “migration partnerships” with other countries.

In a 10-point plan on immigration, Sunak said he would cap the number of refugees the UK accepted each year, tighten the definition of who qualified to claim asylum, and withhold aid money from countries that refused to take back those whose claims were denied and criminals.

In an article for the Sunday Express, Boris Johnson insisted he had delivered a key pledge to “take back control” of Britain’s borders, but the former chancellor eviscerated that assessment.

“We do not have control of our borders,” Sunak said, adding that immigration should be legal, orderly and controlled but “at the moment, it’s none of those things”.

Sunak’s plan to house migrants in cruise ships instead of hotels to save money was criticised by Truss’s campaign, which said the move would be likely to amount to arbitrary detention and a breach of domestic and international law.

The foreign secretary also said she was “determined to see the Rwanda policy through to full implementation as well as exploring other countries where we can work on similar partnerships”.

She vowed not to “cower” before the European convention on human rights, and to reform Britain’s relationship with the human rights court “so it works better”.

Although she is, unlike Sunak, a Brexit convert who voted remain in the 2016 EU referendum, the foreign secretary is seeking to present herself as the true heir to Johnson who will finish the job of overhauling immigration policy.

Frontline Border Force capacity would be increased by 20% if she became prime minister, Truss promised, allowing more Channel patrols to take place to help curb the number of small boat crossings.

Related: Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss serve up ‘red meat’ policies to tempt Tory members

Truss and Sunak were accused by Amnesty International UK of “making promises and policy based on nothing more than what is thought to appeal to some Conservative party members”.

Steve Valdez-Symonds, the charity’s refugee and migrant rights programme director, said it was the same as it had been for the last three years, and added: “It is why our asylum system has collapsed into chaos and backlogs – all at great human and financial cost.”

He said: “It is dreadful that those who aspire to lead are showing no capacity for leadership, which requires focus on what is possible, necessary and lawful.

“Instead, they are setting out on the same dismal course of blaming people fleeing persecution, lawyers and courts for all the ills that our politicians continue to heap upon everyone, rather than taking responsibility for making our asylum system work fairly and efficiently.”

Zehrah Hasan, advocacy director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, also said both politicians were “showing their fierce commitment to cruelty and immorality by trying to abdicate all responsibly for people forced to move to the UK”.

She continued: “They want to expand the hostile environment and ramp up the brutalisation of refugees for political point-scoring. Their plans will only destroy more lives and tear more families apart.”

Concerns were also raised over the value for money feasibility of the plans which have cost taxpayers £120m in exchange for up to 200 asylum seekers being relocated.

Emily Fielder, head of communications for the Adam Smith Institute, said it was ineffectual because “in reality, barely any flights to Rwanda will take off, leaving an asylum system continuing to struggle with a huge backlog and crippling costs”.

She added: “Rather than governing by press release, the Conservative party should look towards engaging more constructively with our European partners, introducing safe routes for those fleeing persecution and implementing vital reforms to clear the backlog of legacy asylum cases.”

Labour said it was “dismal” to see Sunak and Truss “competing to extend an unworkable, unethical, unaffordable, high fraud risk Rwanda scheme” that she said would only make trafficking worse.

While the Liberal Democrats said both leadership candidates wanted to “throw away more good money after bad” and “should never be trusted again with taxpayers money, let alone trusted to treat asylum seekers with decency and respect”.   By Aubrey Allegretti, Guardian