By Tereza Jeremiah Chuei
The South Sudan Women Coalition, South Sudan Youth Coalition and Civil Society forum have yesterday called on the government to expedite the redeployment and operationalization of the phase two of the Training of the Unified Forces.
Speaking during the R-JMEC Extraordinary Meeting in Juba on Thursday, Malish John Peter a Youth and Women Representative at the R-JMEC plenary said they are not persuaded on how the Parties will implement the 73% of the Agreement within two years.
He cited that for the last four years, the parties to the R-ARCSS only implemented 27% of the Revitalized Peace Agreement.
The Youth and Women representative questioned how the peace Parties will implement the remaining 73% within 2years period of time.
“We applaud the President of the Republic of South Sudan Salva Kiir Mayardit and the Parties to the Agreement for the graduation of the first batch of Unified Forces, but we call for their expeditious deployment and the operationalization of Phase two of the screening and training of the Unified Forces,” he said.
“We are not persuaded on how the Parties will achieve what they have set forth within the timeframe proposed, given that over 4 years only 27% of the provisions of the agreement was implement, two years to implement the remaining 73% of the provisions seem overly ambitious,” he added.
Malish added that they were willing to give parties a benefit of doubt that they will live up to their words and implement what they have recommitted to.
The first phase of the First Batch of Unified Forces graduation held on Tuesday 30th August 2022 in Juba witnessed an average number of 21, 000 unified Forces from various units within Central Equatoria State training centers.
Earlier on, R-JMEC welcomed the graduation of the forces but voiced out their concern, calling for immediate implementation of the second phase of the Chapter Two of the Security Arrangement.