South Sudan integrated tens of thousands of soldiers from various armed groups into a national security force, a crucial step in implementing a long-delayed peace agreement in the OPEC+-member country.
(Bloomberg) — South Sudan integrated tens of thousands of soldiers from various armed groups into a national security force, a crucial step in implementing a long-delayed peace agreement in the OPEC+-member country.
The graduation of the officers is the first step in the planned formation of an 83,000-strong so-called unified force tasked with implementing a peace plan signed four years ago, in addition to securing elections planned for 2024.
“We want our people to elect their leaders in 24 months from now — that cannot be possible without a professional security force,” President Salva Kiir said at the graduation ceremony in the capital, Juba, on Aug. 30. “We are determined to implement the remaining parts of the agreement through the roadmap agreed upon.”
South Sudan is recovering from a seven-year conflict in which 400,000 people died and 4 million others were forced to flee their homes. That period also saw the economy shrink 4.1% in the five years leading up to the 2018 peace deal, International Monetary Fund data shows. The country has sub-Saharan Africa’s third-biggest oil reserves, but production has fallen by about half since before war erupted in 2013 to 156,000 barrels per day, according to the Petroleum Ministry.
A previous peace agreement signed in 2015 allowed for two armies in South Sudan’s capital, Juba. Three months into its implementation, the two sides clashed and the deal was aborted, with rebel leader Riek Machar fleeing on foot into neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. That fighting sparked a political and humanitarian crisis in the south of the country.
‘New Era’
Now that the security force has been established, other conditions in the peace agreement should be speedily implemented, including a judicial process to hold to account those involved in the conflict, a citizen-focused constitution-making process and free and fair elections, Edmund Yakani, the executive director of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, a civil society group, said in an emailed statement.
The 21,973 troops that graduated this week were the first of 52,000 set to pass through training centers across the country this year, Kiir said at a ceremony attended by regional leaders including Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the military leader of neighboring Sudan.
The delay in forming a unified force is one of the reasons South Sudan last month extended a transitional government by two years. The conditions of the 2018 peace agreement include a power-sharing government with Kiir as president and former rebel leader Machar as his deputy.
Machar hailed the formation of the force.
“This is the day that our people have been waiting for, millions in the countryside, in the internally displaced settlements, millions of refugees in Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Congo,” he said at the ceremony. “I believe a new era has begun.”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
