The peace talks between the SPLM-Juba of President Salva Kiir and the SPLM-In Opposition of rebel leader Riek Machar are being held in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. They began in January and are taking place under the mediation of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional bloc. Here are the IGAD negotiators charged with bringing the two sides together for lasting peace in South Sudan.
Hailemariam Desalegn, IGAD chairperson – Hailemariam is the Prime Minister of Ethiopia. He has hosted the peace talks in Addis Ababa as the current IGAD chair, a rotating position between heads of state of member nations. Hailemariam has played a key role in bring the two sides together, including when he convinced Machar to visit Addis Ababa in May before the signing of the second ceasefire. Hailemariam was Ethiopia’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs from 2010 until 2012. He became prime minister after the death of longtime leader Meles Zenawi.
Mahboub Maalim, IGAD Executive Secretary – Maalim is a Kenyan engineer in his second term at the IGAD helm. Before taking IGAD’s leadership, he had years of experience managing water, drought, and famine early warning systems in East Africa, which are IGAD priorities. Maalim ruffled feathers in June when he said the attempts by Kiir and Machar to win on the battlefield were “stupid.”
Seyoum Mesfin, IGAD special envoy – Mesfin is a long-serving Ethiopian diplomat and a founding member of the TPLF, the rebel outfit that took power in 1991 and became part of Ethiopia’s current ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. As a member of late Prime Minister Zenawi’s inner circle, Mesfin was Ethiopia’s foreign minister for nearly two decades until 2010 before serving as the nation’s ambassador to China.
Lazaro Sumbeiywo, IGAD special envoy – As the chief negotiator at the Naivasha Talks that ended Sudan’s Second Civil War, Kenyan General Sumbeiywo has perhaps more experience than anyone in forging peace in the Sudans. Sumbeiywo was Kenya’s army Chief of Staff before being assigned by then President Daniel arap Moi to negotiate a peace deal in Sudan. Sumbeiywo led four years of peace talks under IGAD between the Khartoum government of President Omar al-Bashir and the SPLM/A of John Garang de Mabior, resulting in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that paved the way for the creation of South Sudan.
Mohammed Ahmed Moustafa al-Dabi, IGAD special envoy – al-Dabi is a Sudanese diplomat and military figure. al-Dabi had a long career in the Sudanese Armed Forces and served under President Omar al-Bashir as head of military intelligence and the foreign security branch. He was the military’s deputy chief of staff in the late 1990s before acting as Sudan’s ambassador to Qatar from 1999 to 2004. al-Dabi led the Arab League observer mission to Syria in late 2011 and early 2012.
In addition to these principals, envoys from the African and European Unions, China, and the Troika of US, UK, and Norway are observing the mediation, providing financing to the process, seconding security personnel to the IGAD ceasefire monitoring mission, and also meeting directly with some of the key players in the conflict.
File photo: IGAD Chairman and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn (left) with IGAD Special Envoy and former Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin, February 2014