Matthew Hauenstein and Madhav Joshi

On November 8, 2019, the parties to South Sudan’s 2018 peace agreement approved a second extension of its initial implementation period. This new extension is intended to conclude with the inauguration of a unity government between incumbent President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar. This hundred-day period leaves little time to implement the agreement’s outstanding provisions before the new deadline.

In this article, we highlight some recent findings from the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) project’s recent policy brief on the status of the implementation of the agreement, and we offer potential policy solutions based on comparative peace process research.^[1] We emphasize the need for greater political space and more frequent face-to-face meetings of Kiir and Machar to resolve implementation impasses. In addition, we call on regional and international actors to re-engage with the peace process. Lastly, we emphasize the need for greater civil society involvement in the implementation process.

Photo: UNMISS (Flickr)

Stephen Oola

The Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC) is an oversight body established to track implementation of the South Sudan peace agreement signed in August 2015. The JMEC is comprised of representatives of the signatories (parties), other South Sudanese stakeholders, regional guarantors, and the international community, and it monitors, evaluates, and oversees the implementation of the agreement and the mandate and tasks of the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU). In the event of non-compliance, the JMEC is mandated to recommend appropriate corrective actions.

Susan D. Page

The recent hundred-day extension of the first phase of the implementation period for the South Sudan peace agreement provides a small window of time to build a continuous dialogue and improve trust, not only among the five signatories, but also within the wider South Sudanese community, which so far has been largely excluded from the peace process. The extension also creates an opportunity for the United States and other international supporters of the process to increase their commitment to supporting implementation of the agreement.

Although implementation of the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan has been slow, as shown in the analysis by the Peace Accords Matrix project, recent progress shows a glimmer of hope. A November 7, 2019, communiqué issued by the governments of Uganda and Sudan (guarantors to the agreement) stressed the need for the existing government in South Sudan to meet its financial commitments under the peace accord. At the end of November, the five parties to the agreement met and were able to decide on critical tasks for moving forward with security measures, an important step toward building trust.