By Kidega Livingstone
Various civil society organizations (CSOs) are advocating for transitional justice, accountability, reconciliation, and healing, as peace roadmap implementation slows.
Chapter five of the Revitalized Peace Agreement (R-ARCSS) talks about truth, reconciliation, and healing.
However, the extended roadmap remains the only legal framework guiding necessary reforms and steering the country during the current transitional period, but the implementation of other chapters has been very slow, including security arrangements.
Cabinet approved the commission for truth, reconciliation, and healing, and the compensation and reparations authority bills, which were tabled before the revitalized transitional legislative assembly, and a public hearing of the bills is expected.
“We are the members of the Civil Society Task Forces on the Implementation of the Peace. We are looking critically at the commission for truth, reconciliation, healing, and compensation and reparation authority bills that are already in parliament. We want South Sudanese on all the bills,” said Executive Director for the South Sudan Network for Democracy and Election (SSuDE), Galdino Ochama Ojok,
He underscored that all the citizens will be able to participate in the political process because the CSOs have a project that will allow them to look at the peace process by allowing the people to know the two bills and understand them fully.
Mary Nartisio, another civil society representative at the forum, said there is a need for the civil society taskforce to work together to create awareness about the two bills.
She expressed that the groups of civil society organizations have to raise the issue of dialogue among the political parties so that they can implement what they have signed.
“We have to organize for civic education at the grassroots level because many of our people are not aware of the bills. We have to do something about it, “she stated.