A South Sudanese expert said on Tuesday that the ongoing high-level mediation talks for South Sudan, taking place in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, will add impetus to the upcoming electoral process in the country. Abraham Kuol Nyuon, dean of the School for Social and Economic Studies at the University of Juba, said the talks launched on May 3 by Kenyan President William Ruto will not only galvanize the country for the upcoming general election but also lay the foundation for durable peace in the country by bringing on board all the remaining dissenting opposition groups. I think the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity has seen it possible to bring everybody on board before they could be able to talk about elections, Kuol told Xinhua in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. South Sudan is due to hold elections in December, as the transitional period that was extended in August 2022 will end in February 2025. Kuol said the Nairobi peace agreement would be annexed to the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan, which was mediated by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development to end years of conflict since December 2013. The current peace talks in Nairobi will have two aspects, one is that if they sign an agreement, it will be annexed to the 2018 agreement, and it will demonstrate that South Sudan is now completely out of war through imagination because everybody has been brought on board, he said, noting that the final agreement will go a long way toward accommodating the interests of all political actors. The Nairobi peace talks, dubbed Tumaini, meaning hope in Swahili, are attended by the transitional unity government and hold-out opposition groups like the Sudan People's Liberation Movement led by Pagan Amum and the South Sudan United Front under Paul Malong Awan, the former chief of staff of the South Sudan People's Defense Force (SSPDF). However, the National Salvation Front led by Thomas Cirilo Swaka, the former deputy chief of logistics in the SSPDF, has boycotted the talks, citing insecurity in Nairobi and also because they were not consulted. The peace talks between the government and hold-out opposition parties under the South Sudan Opposition Movement Alliance were initially mediated in Rome, Italy. The peace negotiations, which began in November 2019, resulted in the signing of the cessation of hostilities and the declaration of principles but did not progress far in realizing the settlement of the grievances of the opposition groups.
