Regional, int’l actors urged to intensify support to South Sudan’s ongoing peace process

South Sudan peace monitors have urged regional and international actors to intensify their support to the ongoing peace process in South Sudan.

“The time has come for the region to scale up its engagement in South Sudan,” Augostino Njoroge, Interim Chairperson of the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluating Commission (RJMEC), said on late Wednesday during the meeting of the parties to South Sudan’s September 2018 revitalized peace accord in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

Njoroge mainly called on the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the region’s leadership “to show more stewardship and to enhance its diplomatic engagements with the international community and to persuade them to continue enhancing their support as well as funding of implementation of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS).”

“It is possible to make credible and substantive progress towards fulfilling the critical pre-transitional tasks in the remaining time period, if the necessary resources are immediately released for the cantonment, selection, training and redeployment of the Necessary Unified Forces (NUF) and the parties take a political decision on the number of states, and their boundaries,” Njoroge said.

According to Njoroge, the regional and continental leadership organs are also expected to facilitate “regular face-to-face meetings” among the top leadership of the parties to South Sudan’s 2018 peace agreement, with particular emphasis on assessing “the progress of implementation of the R-ARCSS, is also said to be another major task from.”

He also urged IGAD to enhance the Council of Ministers’ engagements with the non-adherents to the revitalized agreement on the resolution of the conflict in South Sudan “to persuade them to join in the agreement’s implementation.”

Njoroge also urged the international community “to consider speaking with one voice on the South Sudan peace process, and continue to work closely with the region, AU and UN on the same.”

The international community has been also urged to support funding the implementation of the revitalized peace accord, including financial backing on the cantonment process and demobilized former combatants’ holistic reintegration programs.

The world’s youngest nation descended into civil war in late 2013. The conflict eventually created one of the fastest-growing refugee crises in the world. The UN estimates that about four million South Sudanese have been displaced internally and externally.

A peace deal signed in August 2015 collapsed following renewed violence in the capital, Juba in July 2016.

In September 2018, South Sudan’s conflicting parties signed a final peace deal in Ethiopia after negotiations brokered by the Sudanese government and mandated by IGAD. Enditem