South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Awan Achiek
Kenya’s President William Ruto on Wednesday pledged to continue supporting efforts aimed at achieving lasting peace in South Sudan.
Ruto made this pledge after receiving a special message from his counterpart, President Salva Kiir Mayardit, through his Special Envoy, who also serves as Minister for Presidential Affairs, Chol Ajongo, at State House in Nairobi.
“The search for lasting peace in South Sudan is of paramount importance to its citizens and the East African region,” Ruto posted on his X account, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday.
He stated that the Tumaini Initiative, which brings together government and opposition parties, will continue to facilitate mediation to achieve lasting peace in the country.
The resumption of the Tumaini, meaning hope in Swahili, on the South Sudan crisis was marred by confusion on Monday after the government side failed to turn up at the Nairobi venue.
Last Friday, Kenyan Chief Mediator Gen (rtd) Lazaro Sumbeiywo extended invitations to government and opposition, aimed at resolving the conflicts.
That came after Kenyan President William Ruto’s visit to Juba, where he held talks with his counterpart Salva Kiir.
The talks are part of the peace process, launched in May 2024, aiming to mediate conflicts involving the holdout opposition groups that have yet to endorse the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS).
In December 2023, President Salva Kiir Mayardit requested Kenya’s President William Ruto to take over the mediation role from the Catholic community of Sant’egidio in Rome, saying that the talks had taken long to arrive at a resolution.
In March, Ruto named Sumbeiywo the chief mediator between hold-out groups and the government.
Sumbeiywo was Kenya’s Special Envoy on Sudan between 1997 and 1998 before former President Daniel Moi later assigned him the role of mediating between the government in Khartoum, under Omar al-Bashir, and the late John Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).
The mediation led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 which gave Southern Sudan autonomy and later led to a referendum for independence in 2011, which created South Sudan.
