- South Sudan achieved independence with help from European and other international partners, but has since struggled with peace due to deep distrust between warring parties. - The pre-transitional period of the peace deal revealed challenges like an unwilling government, inadequate security arrangements, and both sides continuing military recruitment. - Achieving sustainable peace will require pushing a security agenda that enables rather than obstructs peace efforts, and building confidence between the two main leaders through a mechanism with outside support. - Regional powers will need to step up to guide the peace process following Sudan's political changes, as ongoing conflicts in South Sudan and other African countries require urgent humanitarian response.

1. WE SEE THE NEEDS BEFORE THEY ACTUALLY ARISE: AFRICA NEEDS TO
DEVELOP A HUMANITARIAN COMMUNITY OF ITS OWN.
By Dr. Daniel Ekongwe
Director with Pan African Institute for Development
PAID Publications:
INNOVATION and Concerted Development
Series No: 8 - 2019
After the European Union, US, UK and Norway helped South Sudan achieve her
independence why is there a delayed peace in South Sudan. South Sudan has been described
as the newest state in the world but even with this status distrust between warring parties runs
deep.
The international community has been lauding the parties to come to a consensus and has
warned that progress must be made in the face of South Sudanese citizens who are
increasingly worried that the fragility of a deal makes peace more evasive this position is
supported by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
According to the UN Security Council the pre-transitional period of the peace deal exposed
many challenges:
 A reluctant government unwilling to share control of key parts of political, security
and economic power.
 The inadequate security arrangements, for instance, Kiir’s army refused to demilitarise
cities according to the International Crisis Group
 While Machar did not send his soldiers to camp and
 Both sides have continued recruitment.
 More so, as the rainy season approaches cantoning the combatants will be a grievous
challenge.
 The issue of internal boundaries remains unsettled. At independence in 2011, South
Sudan had 10 states. But after signing the 2015 peace deal, Kiir increased the number
to 28, which later became 32 states in what South Sudan experts say was intended to
gerrymander boundaries along ethnic lines and now neither side can agree on how
many states should exist.
 Fighting has subsided but clashes continue in pockets across the country specifically
in Central Equatoria State, where the National Salvation Front (NAS) one of the key
non-signatory parties to the agreement has a large presence.
To achieve concerted sustainable peace the parties will need to push forward a security
agenda that enables and not obstructs progress in the peace efforts according to the
International Crisis Group who by the way is bemoaning the absence of outside mediation.
According to Payton Knopf, advisor to the United States Institute of Peace and a former US
diplomat there is deep distrust between Kiir and Machar which needs a confidence building
mechanism between the two strong men of South Sudan. The African Union and the eight-
nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development has urged the government to release the
$100 million to contribute to the peace process to funds expertise, and institutional capacity.

2. The ousting of Omar Al Bashir of Sudan in April 2019 who was one of the main backers of
South Sudan’s peace deal creates a diplomatic void. As such regional powers will have to step
up the plate to guide the process as well as Western donors, specifically the European Union
and the US, UK, and Norway. 2019 was supposed to have been a political year of promise for
many African countries in transition; the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan,
Comoros Island, Gabon, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Sudan, Algeria, and
Madagascar. However, a potentially seismic election, the outbreak and spreading of Ebola and
a power-sharing government has left unstable peace in these countries including South Sudan
and the DRC both of whom continue to experience the world's largest humanitarian crises,
displacing more than 10 million people between them.
While these calamities continue the ordinary citizens of these countries remain helpless before
powerful politicians, security chiefs and militia leaders whose interest remain on sharing the
spoils of the country while communal violence; mass displacement; food insecurity as well as
outbreaks of cholera and measles calls for urgent assistance. The local conflicts have been
caused by climate and pastoral conflict, political instability, ethno/cultural tensions which are
creating a vengeance cycle from conflicts that clearly have a political root. These conflicts
have left close to 2 million people dead putting together the figures from the DRC Congo,
South Sudan, Cameroon, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Somalia and Central African Republic.
All these trouble needs urgent humanitarian response and a total approach to Disaster risk
management.
Done: 4 July 2019