South Sudan–Sudan border meeting kicks off in Juba

JUBA – The meeting between South Sudan and Sudan Joint Border Commission (JBC), a body tasked with demarcating the border between the two countries, kicked off in Juba on Monday.

The meeting will review, discuss size and description of borderlines between the two countries

South Sudan’s minister of information and Co-chair of the Joint Border Commission, Michael Makuei Lueth, urged members of the body to commit themselves in addressing the border issues.

“Today’s meeting is very important, it is important because this is a starting point of real deliberation on issues in question,” Makuei said at the opening session in Juba yesterday.

Makuei stressed the need for the committee to devote themselves to preserve the interests of the two peoples living along the border.

“Since 2013, we have been sitting and deliberating but nevertheless, there has never been progress made because we have been on and off fluctuating agreeing and disagreeing all these times,” he said.

“This was simply because we failed to make a real submission of our positions and this was only done in our last 8^th meeting in Khartoum. This is where we submitted the positions of the two parties,” he added.

He hopes that the meeting will bring peaceful co-exist among people at borders.

“I hope these positions will not change again and take us back, but I hope that from that meeting onward we will be moving in an effort to come up with a final solution that will bring peaceful co-existence to our people at borders,” he said.

Since the secession of South Sudan from Sudan in 2011, the two countries have been contesting the border areas of Abyei, commercial Kaka, Debbat El Fukhar, and Jebel Magenis, the 14-mile area South of Bahr EL Arab, Hafrat EL Nukhas and Kafia Kingi.

Though the Joint Commission signed a border demarcation agreement in October 201, several disputed areas remained, particularly due to the oil-rich nature of borderlands.