Kenyan-led peace talks to resume next week

NAIROBI – The Tumaini Initiative, a Kenyan-led peace talks between the South Sudan government and non-signatory opposition groups to the revitalized peace agreement, will resume early next week in the Kenyan capital, the chief mediator announced Friday.

Lazarus Sumbeiywo announced the resumption of the talks in a statement that followed a two-day visit by Kenyan President William Ruto to South Sudan’s capital Juba where he met President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar.

The meeting between Ruto and Kiir resolved to resume mediation efforts between the government and nonsignatory opposition groups to the revitalized peace agreement within 14 days in Nairobi to address unresolved issues.

“Following the resolution on the way forward for Tumaini Peace Initiative, the High-Level Mediation for South Sudan would like to inform the stakeholders that the talks resume on 11^th November 2024 with a view of concluding the proposed time frame of two weeks,” Sumbeiywo said in a letter addressed to stakeholders on Friday.

He said the two leaders appreciated the parties for drafting nine protocols which have been agreed and initiated so far.

In December 2023, President Kiir requested Kenya’s Ruto to take over the mediation role from the Catholic community of Sant’ Egidio in Rome, saying that the talks had taken long without arriving at a conclusive resolution to the conflict.

A series of pre-talk consultations have been going on in the Kenyan capital to bring the government and some opposition groups to the negotiation table.

Sumbeiywo was named to the mediator position in March by Ruto to further the South Sudan president’s calls for Kenyan assistance on peace talks.

The retired Kenyan general was Kenya’s Special Envoy on Sudan between 1997 and 1998, before former President Daniel Moi later assigned him the role of mediating between the government in Khartoum, under Omar al-Bashir, and the late John Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

The mediation led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 which gave Southern Sudan autonomy and later led to a referendum for independence in 2011, which created South Sudan.