Here is why IGAD-Plus should play a more visible lead role in the solving the South Sudan question
On August 5th
2016, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the IGAD-Plus held its
Second Extra – Ordinary Summit meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and deliberated
on the prevailing situation in the Republic of South Sudan. This was one of the
high level meetings purposefully convened to discuss the South Sudan question ever
since fighting broke out in the country on July 8th 2016.
One of the
key outcomes of this important meeting was the decision to deploy a Regional
Protection Force in South Sudan. A force
that will be under the command of the UNMISS with a peace enforcement mandate.
and will be responsible for enforcing peace.
In its
other recommendations, the meeting called upon the warring parties to
immediately return to the implementation of Chapter Two of the Agreement on the
Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS); Dr. Riek
Machar to rejoin the peace process and Gen. Taban Deng to step down.
These and
many more endorsements form the red-thread of the resolutions of the just
concluded IGAD-Plus meeting.
The concern
around the outcome of the meeting is not just about how good, beautiful or bad the
recommendations made by IGAD-Plus are, but how consistently and committedly
these resolutions will be followed through.
IGAD has
had a fairly good record of championing peace processes in South Sudan (with an
unwavering support from the African Union), which resulted into the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), between the South and North. It is arguably because of IGAD’s role that
South Sudan got its independence on July 9th 2011.
For
sometime now, IGAD has become the unifying vehicle to engage the ever-shifting
internal dynamics in South Sudan more effectively. Whereas IGAD’s role has been clear-cut in the
past, there seems to be a sense that it may be slowly ceding its position and
responsibilities to other secondary actors in the process of galvanizing
regional and international engagement on the South Sudan conflict. The transition from IGAD to IGAD-Plus (within
the context of South Sudan) was meant to facilitate a mechanism that would
bridge between continental solution approaches and concerted high-level, wider
international engagements in solving the South Sudan conflict. And as the name of the mechanism suggests,
IGAD-Plus is supposed to take a center-stage leadership role – while bringing
other entities to the table for technical, financial and other forms of support
or complementarity.
There is an
increasing conception that IGAD-Plus is not taking a visible lead in marshaling
disparate actors behind a defined strategy, creating the space for the
proliferation of various regional and international processes. If this continues, then, the role and
centrality of IGAD-Plus could get lost in other multiple, parallel, overlapping
and, sometimes, contradictory processes convened by individual countries and
bodies such as: the AU, the UN, the Troika (the U.S., UK and Norway), the
European Union, China, Tanzania, South Africa and Egypt in handling the South
Sudan question.
For
IGAD-Plus to follow through on the recommendations made at its recent second
extra ordinary summit on the situation in South Sudan, it must take a more distinct
stance in coordinating all the other international actors within a framework of
a single, well-defined strategy. To
pursue this, IGAD-Plus will have to reinvigorate proper structures through
which it will liaise, harmonize and guide other prevailing parallel processes
without ceding its tested leadership position, but while seeking to harness complementarity. Short of that, IGAD-Plus may remain
constrained to exert authority or command respect from key actors even within
South Sudan.
IGAD-Plus
has to stand out, rise to the occasion and assert itself in the solution-finding
matrix with respect to South Sudan; if it doesn’t, then it will be seen as
another champion of recurrent peace jokes in the youngest country.
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