IGAD has turned blind eye on South Sudan peace implementation – opposition official

JUBA – The regional bloc, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which mediated the revitalized peace agreement has turned blind eye at the implementation of the 2018 peace deal and so at the plight of the people of South Sudan, according to a senior opposition official.

President Kiir and his first deputy Dr. Riek Machar signed the revitalized version of the 2015 peace agreement in Addis Ababa in September 2018, ending more than six years of devastating conflict in the world’s youngest country.

The agreement provides, in Chapter two, for reunification of the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces and the rival Sudan People’s Liberation Army  in Opposition, among others, to constitute the country’s first professional national army.

However, none of these provisions has been implemented and the agreement has stuck at Chapter one which relates to structures of the revitalized unity government.

In a statement to Sudans Post this afternoon, Nathaniel Pierino, the SPLM-IO representative to the National Constitutional Amendment Committee (NCAC), said IGAD has left its obligation to oversee the successful implementation of the revitalized peace agreement.

“The complacency of IGAD [……] has reached its climax. The member states of IGAD have turn blind eyes on the plight of South Sudanese people and are busy with their internal matters. Including elections and Covid19 pandemic,” Nathaniel said.

“IGAD could have assumed responsibility that it could not be able to discharge. The international partners including the troika, having exhausted their leverage shall at the end resort to and plead with the parties to guarantee the agreement especially the permanent ceasefire,” he added.

Nathaniel who is a former governor for the defunct SPLM-IO Imatong state said South Sudan parties “have been granted free hands and are at liberty, in essence, the parties are the actual guarantors of the agreement, they can choose to implement the agreement or not to do so. Which is why the R-ARCSS (2018) may altogether be turned by the parties into a ‘Gentlemen Agreements.’

“With this backdrop, and failing to arrest the complacency, reality shall dictate that the agreement shall require an elastic timetable and a Transitional Period longer than that previously envisaged. Given the proposed Six (6) months extension of the matrix is already behind schedule before it was announced at the last JMEC plenary.”