By William Madouk
A Six-day evaluation workshop for Juba Peace Agreement for Sudan has begun in Juba with a purpose to fish out matters hindering implementation of the Sudanese peace deal that is hanging on thread due to poor score.
Deputy Chairman & Secretary for Mediation Committee, Dr. Dhieu Mathok decried the peace implementation performance is very poor.
“According to our evaluation, the implementation is really almost very low – around 2 point something percent that’s the ratio of the implementation,” Mathok lamented.
He added that, as mediator they are trying to examine reasons that contribute to this lack of implementation, adding that not all provisions require money and he advised for creation of new mechanisms.
“We are going to recommend to them the formation of mechanisms including monitoring and evaluation mechanism to oversee the implementation of the agreement,” he said.
Mathok who is also minister of Investment cited that “We invited the parties to come and tell us what are the challenges facing them but as mediator and peace guarantor we recorded some of the major challenges.”
According to him, the political instability in Sudan and lack of funding have negatively contributed to slow execution of peace deal asserting that if these matters remain unsolved it could disrupt peace.
“We have seen also there are differences among the signatories of the peace agreement themselves, since the time they went to Sudan there are a lot of divisions and we hope this workshop will help in creating harmony and unity among them again,” he said.
For his part, the representative of the parties to agreement, Salwa Adam Binnaiya said “this workshop is very vital and it’s to evaluate the implementation of Juba peace Agreement, we will see provisions that are completed and pending provisions and why,”
“I am hopeful that we will come out with a very good recommendations to remove all hurdles impeding implementation of peace,” she added.
Binnaiya said hurdles facing implementation of peace deal are many and that includes lack of funding, political turmoil and none existence of stable government in Sudan.
She recommended for commencement of governance conference in Sudan, and establishment of monitoring and evaluation committee among other mechanisms.
Binnaiya who is also the Secretary General of SPLM-N said some tracks to the Juba peace agreement recorded zero in terms of performance.
“There are some tracks that did not register any progress step. Only two tracks did well and this are Two Areas [South Kordofan/Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile state] and Darfur though not satisfactory result,” she noted.
Meanwhile, chairman for Sudanese peace commission, Dr. Suilman Mohammed said Juba peace deal is very ‘ambitious’ and of course its implementation was very ‘high’ because it addresses the root cause of the conflict in Sudan.
Mohammed, however said Sudan was lacking proper government which impeded the implementation of peace but now all political parties have agreed to start the unity government.
He disagreed that Juba peace registered zero implementation citing it’s only some protocol in North and central Sudan, adding if government is formed it is going to be resolved.
According to him, the comprehensive peace agreement cannot be achieved if holdout groups led by Abdelaziz Adam Al-hilu and Adbel Wahid Al-Nur fail to join the negotiation table.
Mohammed also thanked government of South Sudan led by President Salva Kiir for their unwavering support in trying to bring lasting peace to Sudan.