South Sudanese President Salva Kiir has granted a broad amnesty to rebels of the country’s civil war, including his former deputy-turned- rival Riek Machar. Rights groups are calling for state authorities to free critics of the government of Africa’s youngest nation.

Late Wednesday, the amnesty order was read live on state-run television. Barely three days after President Kiir, leader of the SPLM and rebel leader Riek Machar alongside heads of other groups, signed a power-sharing and ceasefire agreement in the capital of neighboring Sudan, Khartoum.

The fallout between Kiir and Machar morphed into a civil war back in 2013, which has killed tens of thousands of South Sudanese, forced hundreds of thousands more of the country’s population from their homes, ravaging the infant country’s oil-dependent economy.

South Sudan had its independence from Sudan in 2011, the conflict in the country has left thousands dead, brought untold suffering as famine has crept in, communities destroyed and millions of internally and externally people.

Neba Benson,

BaretaNews Foreign Correspondent/Analyst