Gov’t ‘duty-bound’ to graduate more than 53,000 peace forces without guns over arms embargo

JUBA – South Sudan government has announced that it has been pressured and is set to graduate – without guns – over 53,000 forces drawn from all the signatories to the revitalized peace agreement.

Based on the revitalized peace agreement signed by President Salva Kiir Mayardit and First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar Teny, South Sudan is supposed to train and graduate 83,000 personnel to take charge of security during the ongoing transitional period.

As the transitional is about to end, none of those forces provided for in the revitalized peace agreement has been graduated and the minister of cabinet affairs Martin Elia Lomuro is saying that 53,7803 forces have been assembled by the parties for graduation.

“We have 53, 703 forces that are in training centers, and they are waiting for graduation. They comprised of 15, 903 national armies, 22,287 from other organized forces, 4,131 national security, 3,010 VIP protections, and 8,202 the support unit is ready for graduation,” Lomuro told reporters during a press conference in Juba on Saturday.

The senior South Sudan government official further said the parties have agreed to the command of the army which was behind the delay before but said the forces will be graduated without guns because they have been forces to rush to the forces’ graduation.

“Now that we have agreed on the sharing of command structure, we can expeditiously move on now to graduate the unified force so that they can be deployed even if we don’t have guns,” Lomuro said.

“We can’t provide them with guns because of the arms embargo. We feel duty-bound to graduate them to show the commitment of the government of R-TGoNU to implement the agreement,” he added.