Matia Samuel
Africa-Press – South-Sudan. African presidents follow the launch of the Tumaini Initiative in Nairobi, where the government is negotiating with the holdout groups. [Photo: courtesy]
A civil society activist and an observer in the ongoing Nairobi peace talks said he is optimistic that the initiative will yield positive results for the country.
The Executive Director for the Centre for Peace and Advocacy, Ter Manyang, said both the government and opposition parties on the negotiating table are facing issues with positive attitudes.
“Peace will come because the government is very honest and serious at this time. We need the participation of every stakeholder in South Sudan because their participation matters a lot,” Manyang said.
“In terms of behaviours, all the delegations now approach the issues [well] and their attitude is good; both the government and opposition parties and also from civil society,” he added.
Manyang told The City Review last week that some of the key issues in the talks cut a cross political, governance and security sector reforms and all the parties have been cooperative.
“We discussed the political and the governance plus security sector reforms in which the majority of participants agreed on these issues. The Kenyan government as the host is very serious about this because they want to bring the other stakeholders on board especially Gen. Thomas Cirilo and Gen. Gatwech,” said Manyang.
He said the South Sudanese need to give Kenya the benefit of the doubt because they have obligations to protect all the delegations to the peace talks since the administration handling the talk is new.
“What I want to say is that South Sudan is not the first country that went through all these kinds of crisis, there are other countries that went through the same stages and the best option always in conflict resolution is dialogue,” he said, adding that every citizen has the responsibility of maintaining peace.
When the talks commenced, the government spokesperson, Michael Makuei, said the Nairobi peace process offered the last opportunity for the government of South Sudan to fully bury the differences with the non-signatory parties to the revitalized peace agreement.
Source: The City Review South Sudan
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