South Sudanese civil society have declared the month from now until Independence Day a time to campaign for peace, after a year and a half of civil war.

Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO) led by Edmund Yakani announced this on Tuesday at a press conference at the organization's premises in Juba.

“As you know in every 9^th of the month in our level as CEPO we do conduct peace campaign in our country. This time we feel that the 9^th of June until the 9^th July, we wanted to declare a month for campaigning for peace,” he said.

Yakani said the campaign will involve different groups of peace-lovers aiming to carry out peaceful public rallies in the state capitals across South Sudan with the exception of Malakal and Bentiu. He said also the religious leaders will dedicate Fridays and Sundays respectively for fasting and prayers for peace.

“At the end, the ultimate goal of this campaign is to influence the agenda – as you know the peace mediation is going on. We need to raise up the voices of the people of South Sudan so that their voices can be heard.”

“And the other one is that, if peace comes, the peace will not become an achievement of two warring parties like what we have in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)”, Yakani said, referring to the 2005 deal which has sometimes been criticized as an elite power-sharing deal that did not adequately account for stakeholders like civil society.

Yakani called on the East African regional organization IGAD to prioritize permanent cessation of hostilities in the next phase of the mediation. A consultative meeting between the South Sudanese government, SPLM-G10 and SPLA-IO kicked off yesterday in Addis Ababa mediated by IGAD.