Kiir has lost hope in peace implementation – activist

JUBA – A South Sudan activist who resigned from the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (R-JMEC) to protest lack of will to implement the revitalized peace agreement has said that South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit has lost hope in the implementation of the 2018 peace agreement.

Rajab Muhandis yesterday resigned from (R-JMEC) and accused the parties, especially the government, of lacking the willing to implement the peace agreement. He pointed to President Kiir’s speech in July in which he said the revitalized peace agreement was designed in a way that it cannot be implemented by the party signatories to it.

“Those mandated by Article 1.1.1 of the R-ARCSS to implement the peace agreement have lost confidence in the peace process. While launching the Workshop on the Constitution Making Process on July 25, 2021, the President publicly declared that the peace agreement is too complicated to be implemented, and that those who designed the agreement did not intend that it would be implemented,” Muhandis said in his resignation letter addressed to South Sudan Civil Society Forum who nominated him to the R-JMEC.

“A process whose main implementers have lost faith in it cannot be the same source of hope for the resolution of the multiple and worsening crises in the country. R-ARCSS continues to fail to deliver on all its core mandates including security, economy, humanitarian situation, institutional reforms and transitional justice,” he said.

Muhandis said “three years into the implementation of the R-ARCSS today, 8.3 million South Sudanese are now in need of humanitarian assistance. Meanwhile, there are no accurate estimates of the thousands of people who have been killed in violence over this period as a direct result of the failure to deliver peace through this agreement. Critically, the agreement has not been used effectively to develop government capacity to fully govern the country and protect civilians from violence.”

“The inconsistencies in the peace implementation are only setting the country up for more crises. For example, delays to implement the transitional security arrangements present serious security threats to the peace process and the civil population. Soldiers desert the cantonment sites and training centers and return to civilian areas with their guns while others, like in Kit Gwang, resort to mass defections all because of frustrations with the failure to implement the transitional security arrangements.”