Put your house in order, South Sudan leaders told

The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide, has called for a speedy resolution to the conflict and the political divisions in South Sudan.

He made the remarks as he affirmed his country’s support for the peace process in South Sudan, led by Kenyan Lazarus Sumbeiywo.

“I want to underline a very essential part of what I understand.  I hope I am correctly informed that this is not a meeting to make a new agreement. You have an agreement which is the 2018 agreement,” he said on Friday evening.

“This is about how you implement it, to identify what went wrong, what can you do better and how actually to implement what you all agreed on,” he added.

Eide pointed out that the Nairobi peace talks narrowed down the scope but it made clearer what the delegates ought to do.

The leadership wrangle in South Sudan has been ongoing for years, despite signed peace deals.  On May 9, new peace talks were imitative in Nairobi, Kenyan, between the South Sudan Government and the holdout groups.

The talks leader Sumbeiywo, also mediated the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, which gave Southern Sudan autonomy and later led to a referendum for independence in 2011.

In December 2023, South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir requested his Kenyan counterpart William Ruto to take over the mediation from the Community of Sant’Egidio in Rome, complaining that the talks had taken long in Rome’s hands without resolution. 

“You need to solve your problems at home, we will be with you. But the key is governance, the key is the respect for the rule of law, the key is human rights which should be universally applied to all people,” said the Norwegian minister while addressing the peace delegates in Nairobi.

“You have to put your house in order, and you have to get together. So, you have to find key solutions which the people of South Sudan expect from you,” he added.

In attendance were the government delegation, the opposition hold-out delegates, stakeholders and the Kenyan mediators and observers. 

According to the Norwegian minister, growth and prosperity, the sharing of oil revenue and the management of South Sudan’s economy would come once there is stability and good governance.