South Sudan : Peace Deal In Limbo

After several months of negotiations between the government and a holdout armed groups, the peace talks that almost reached completion risks crumbling with opposition groups demanding a newly passed bill allowing the detention of people without an arrest warrant scratched out and a new proposed deal signed. Since May 2024, Kenya’s capital Nairobi has been playing host to the high-level meeting between government representatives and rebel opposition groups who were not part of a 2018 agreement that ended a five-year civil war, leaving about 400,000 people dead and millions displaced. 
On Tuesday July 9, 2024, a top official of the South Sudan Opposition Movement Alliance, Pagan Amum Okiech, told the Associated Press that, “it would be meaningless to sign any agreement if the draconian National Security Act is signed into law by the President”. Last week, the South Sudanese Parliament voted in favour of the 2015 bill which President Salva Kiir will have to approve within 30 days for it to become a law. According to the opposition, “the law violates the fundamental rights and freedoms of South Sudanese citizens, it eliminates civic and political space,” Amum said. There can be no peace or democracy under such a law, he reiterated.
The talks dubbed Tumaini (hope in Swahili), comes ahead of the country’s slated first-ever election on ...