Election officials in South Sudan have set Dec. 22 as the date for the country’s long awaited first general election since independence in 2011. After five postponements in 15 years amid a protracted violent power struggle between the country’s two rival warlords — dictator Salva Kiir and his former deputy-turned-rival Riek Machar — HRF echoes the grave concerns expressed by the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan earlier this year that conditions for a credible electoral process and vote do not exist.

On Monday, South Sudan’s National Elections Commission (NEC) Chair Abednego Akok Kacuol, a member of Kiir’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-In Government (SPLM-IG) party, announced the allocation of $6 million to support preparations for general polls on Dec. 22. He also announced NEC’s acquisition of permanent headquarters and the launch of civic and voter education across the country’s 10 states and three administrative areas.

The unilateral announcements occurred amid ongoing fighting between South Sudan’s military under the control of Kiir and rebel forces in several parts of the country who are loyal to Machar, the country’s first vice president who has been under house arrest on politically-motivated charges since 2025. On Monday, Machar’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO) announced its hostility to the election by threatening anyone carrying out voter registration or campaigns in the territories it controls.

Recurring political disputes between Kiir — who has been in power since South Sudan’s independence — and Machar have plunged the country into recurring armed conflict, including a brutal five-year civil war, which has led to repeated election postponements. In February, the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan concluded that Kiir and Machar are “systematically dismantling” a 2018 peace agreement that ended the civil war.

“Credible electoral processes are unrealistic in a context where civic space is repressed, conflict rages, more than three million people are internally displaced, and key opposition leaders are arbitrarily detained during a politicized trial,” warned the commission’s chair, Yasmin Sooka.