Akobo peace conference ends with calls for mass registration of abductees

BOR – A week-long stakeholders’ peace conference concluded in Jonglei State’s border town of Akobo on Monday with a call for mass registration of abductees.

The dialogue brought together representatives of traditional leaders from 11 counties, government officials, youth, and women of Jonglei State and the Greater Pibor Administrative Area (GPAA).

It discussed the end of abductions, cattle raiding, and counterattacks between communities of the two neighboring areas.

“There should be a mass registration of the abductees, the children who were abducted from Greater Pibor Administrative Area and also from Jonglei,” Puok Nyang, Akobo County commissioner, told Sudans Post on Monday.

Nyang reaffirmed his government’s commitment to continue to reunite abductees with their parents but said their Pibor counterparts are not doing the same.

“We recognize our efforts as Jonglei State; we recovered and reunited 300 children to their rightful parents in the Greater Pibor Administrative Area,” he said.

“But the other side of Pibor is not doing enough, they have not returned the many children as we did in Jonglei, recently, I gave them 13 children as commissioner of Akobo but they only managed to give us 2 children.”

Jonglei state has been mired in rampant communal violence characterized by cattle raiding, revenge killings, and child abduction.

Authorities in Jonglei state have blamed some incidents of violence on armed Murle youth from the neighboring Greater Pibor Administrative Area.

Denay Jock Chagor, Governor of Jonglei State, while appearing before lawmakers in the national legislative assembly in October, said that more than 266 abducted children and women were traced and reunited with their families between 2021 and 2023 in Greater Jonglei State.

He said his state had returned 255 abductees to GPAA while the authorities of GPAA had handed over to them only 11 abductees between 2021 and 2023.