Some members of the Ceasefire and Transitional Security Arrangement Monitoring and Verification Mechanism (CTSAMVM) have accused the Mechanism’s top leadership of mistreating the nationals’ monitors.
Addressing members of the CTSAMVM Technical Committee (CTC) during a plenary meeting in Juba on Thursday, Lt. Gen. Rabi Mujung Emmanuel, the SSPDF representative in CTSAMVM, accused the organization of prioritizing the well-being of foreign nationals over South Sudanese monitors.
“We who are representing the CTC are not happy at all with the conduct of CTSAM leadership. We feel that CTSAM members at CTC are not treated fairly compared to others although they are also members of CTSAM,” he stated. “I had wanted us to have a confrontation so that you, the new chairperson, and the former chairman can listen to us.”
For his part, Maj. Gen. Bior Leek Kuareng, the representative of the Former Detainees in CTSAMVM, charged that both the previous and current heads of the Mechanism do not know their mandate.
“What I have observed for five years is simply that every chairman of the CTSAM does not know their mandate. They came here with the impression that they are the commanders and they have to give us directives which is very wrong,” he asserted. “We are here for consensus as parties and if any party is missing within any meeting, it means that the meeting will not go on.”
Gen. Leek accused the CTSAMVM chairman of siding with the International Community to national monitors.
“We have been suppressed in the CTSAM because every chairman who comes here sides with the international community to accuse national monitors and I have witnessed more than six chairpersons here now,” he said. “What makes it worse is that there is no transparency within CTSAM in terms of financial dealings and employment and our people are subjected to be third-class citizens within CTSAM.”
In 2021, the government took over the responsibility of paying the national monitors in CTSAMVM and disbursed $295,200 to the Mechanism to clear the salary and allowance arrears of its national monitors after the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD-the body which mediated the peace deal, declined to pay South Sudan nationals on ceasefire teams.
On 15 July 2022, the U.S. Government cut off its financial support for RJMEC and CTSAMVM due to a lack of progress on the implementation of the 2018 revitalized peace agreement.