The United Nations rights chief urged on Friday for warring sides in South Sudan to pull back from the brink, warning that the human rights situation risks further deterioration as fighting intensifies. “The escalating hostilities in South Sudan portend a real risk of further exacerbating the already dire human rights and humanitarian situation, and undermining the country’s fragile peace process,” said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk. “All parties must urgently pull back from the brink,” he added. South Sudan, the world’s youngest country after gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, was plunged into a violent civil war between 2013 and 2018 that claimed around 400,000 lives. A power-sharing agreement between the warring parties provided a fragile calm, but it has all but collapsed as violent clashes have broken out between forces allied to President Salva Kiir and his long-time rival, First Vice-President Riek Machar, who was put under house arrest in March. Since May 3 fighting has intensified, with the UN citing reports of indiscriminate aerial bombardments and river and ground offensives by the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces on Sudan People’s Liberation Army positions in parts of Fangak in Jonglei State and in Tonga County in Upper Nile. At least 75 civilians were killed and 78 others injured by the fighting, which displaced thousands from their homes between May 3-20, the agency said. Civilian-populated areas have been targeted, including a medical facility operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), it added. Many people have also fled from war in Sudan to South Sudan since April 2023, according to the UN. South Sudan was already facing a dire humanitarian situation before that particular war erupted from a power struggle between the army and the RSF paramilitary group. It has unleashed waves of ethnic violence, creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and plunging several areas into famine. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and about 13 million displaced. Meanwhile, South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia face an imminent “health catastrophe”, MSF said on Friday, citing a cholera epidemic and cases of severe acute malnutrition. It said 35,000 to 85,000 South Sudanese refugees have fled to Mattar, an Ethiopian town near the border with South Sudan. “The local infrastructure is stretched beyond capacity,” the NGO said in a statement, adding that “with the resurgence of waterborne diseases such as cholera and acute watery diarrhoea, the risk of a health disaster is imminent”. MSF said it had treated around 1,200 patients with cholera, a disease that can be fatal in 10-20 per cent of cases. “Over 40 per cent of malaria rapid diagnostic tests have returned positive, and nearly seven per cent of children under five show signs of severe acute malnutrition,” MSF added. The NGO also announced that it had moved its medical services from the Ethiopian border town of Burbeiye to the more distant Mattar due to armed clashes between “the South Sudanese army and an opposition group” along the border. It has received more than 200 people with “war injuries” in Burbeiye since the fighting began in February, it said. MSF urged the various parties to the conflict in South Sudan to “ensure a safe humanitarian space and protect civilians and aid workers alike,” and called on international donors to scale up assistance particularly in Mattar “where shelter, water and medical care are in too low supply for people who have fled horrific violence”. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse