As part of efforts to end a cycle of intercommunal violence in the Greater Jonglei region, the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) on Wednesday hosted a peace forum in the capital Juba.
The greater Jonglei region has been plagued by recurring intercommunal violence involving the Dinka, Nuer and Murle communities. The cycle of violence is often accompanied by cattle raids, child abductions and other forms of revenge-inducing crimes.
Thousands of families in Jonglei State and the Greater Pibor area have had their lives devastated by a vicious cycle of fighting and revenge attacks for the past six months. At least 160,000 people are estimated to be displaced because of a combination of the conflict and widespread flooding which has devastated homes and crops.
In June, President Salva Kiir formed a committee to address the root causes of intercommunal violence in the Greater Jonglei region.
UNMISS reported on its website that the peace forum in Juba brought together political leaders at the national and state level as well as community elders, civil society and other key stakeholders for mediation and peace talks.
Opening the event, the head of the UN Mission in South Sudan, David Shearer said that every community in Jonglei had suffered from the violence.
“Whether Dinka, Nuer, or Murle, you have all been attacked. All of you have been aggrieved. All of you have had people taken. Everybody has had their cattle stolen and people killed. All three communities,” said David Shearer. “But that means all three communities are also in some ways guilty of doing that to the others as well. This is literally a race to the bottom, and we don’t want to see the people of Jonglei getting poorer and poorer and needing more and more outside humanitarian help.”
Shearer pointed out that UNMISS can render political and logistical support for governors to conduct peace talks across the State, adding that the mission can also provide peacekeepers to monitor buffer zones between the groups.
However, he said there has to be a genuine willingness among all parties to work constructively together to end the fighting first.
“It’s important that people come together and have this agreement because we know that, in the fighting over the past few months, it wasn’t just happening on the ground in isolation to what was happening here in Juba,” said David Shearer. “There were others who were supplying weapons and things that were fueling the conflict so we need now to have an agreement here that can be taken out around Jonglei and we can talk about peace and how we move forward.”
Alain Noudehou, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan, described the situation in Jonglei as a “quadruple threat” consisting of conflict, hunger, flooding, and now COVID-19.
“How are we able to work in an environment like that where this quadruple threat is increasing the level of vulnerability, making people so much poorer, and almost impossible for them to have the chance to get out of poverty and move towards a life where they can actually enjoy the fruits of the peace that is happening in the country,” said Alain Noudehou. “That is not possible if we don’t deal with the underlying factors that we are facing.”
Noudehou said humanitarian agencies are working hard to try and help people who are living in the open without shelter – or without health care, adequate food, sanitation – in the middle of the rainy season.
The UN official stressed that for recovery and rebuilding to take place in Jonglei, the cycle of violence must stop.
For his part, the governor of Jonglei said the region desperately need the support of donors, humanitarians and the United Nations if it is to find a way through the conflict and to build peace.
“We feel that, if we get the logistical support, the financial support, political support, if we get all this support, we should be able to solve this problem,” said Governor Denay Chagor. “But if we don’t, the catastrophe of it will be so great that it would mean the entire country of South Sudan would go back into war. We don’t want that to happen.”