President Salva Kiir Mayardit has called for concerted efforts towards achieving durable peace and a reconciled society in South Sudan. Kiir made the call at the closure of the conference on Transitional Justice System in Juba earlier this month.
The conference deliberated on ways to enrich the draft bills for the establishment of the Commission for Truth, Reconciliation and Healing, as well as the Compensation and Repatriation Authority and the Hybrid Court, as spelled out in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 of the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS).
Only two years after South Sudan gained its independence in 2011, the power struggle between President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar resulted in an atrocious civil war. In 2015, the signing of the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS), which was brokered by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), led to a temporary pause in the fighting, but it was reignited within a few months. New efforts at peace negotiations followed, eventually resulting in the R-ARCSS, finalized in September 2018.
The R-ARCSS is a set of agreements that seeks, as the title suggest, to revitalize the ARCSS. Its provisions are very similar to those of its predecessor: a permanent ceasefire; a power-sharing transitional government; followed by elections after three years. However, compared to the ARCSS it has a more ambitious timeline for establishing a unified army, and it includes provisions to determine the country’s internal borders, which were the subject of considerable gerrymandering during the war.
According to President Kiir, all the pending tasks in the agreement require collective efforts. He called on the actors to use the lessons learned from the conference to mobilise for peace and reconciliation and provision of basic services to the citizens.
The Head of State also called on the non-signatories to the agreement to join in the journey of peace and reconciliation, stressing that the country has enough for everyone.
‘‘I call on all the Vice Presidents, Ministers, MPs and all stakeholders to encourage peace and reconciliation wherever you maybe to have a conducive environment for elections,’’ President Kiir said.
On his part, the First Vice President, Dr. Riek Machar Teny commended President Kiir for the outstanding political will to conduct the conference. This, the FVP said is the right step towards the realization of political transformation in South Sudan.
State Governors, Chief Administrators, County Commissioners, regional and international experts who attended the conference, believe that the transitional Justice Model to be used in South Sudan, should be homegrown and in accordance with the people’s sense of justice.
