Sudan peace deal fragile due to lack of funding and political uncertainty: experts

Juba, South Sudan | Xinhua | The peace agreement signed in August 2020 to end decades of conflict in neighboring Sudan has stalled largely due to political uncertainty and lack of international support, mediators said Monday during the opening of a five-day workshop to review the peace agreement in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

Dhieu Mathok Diing, the South Sudan minister of Investment and a member of the mediation team, said the ongoing political uncertainty created by disagreement over power-sharing among some of the signatories is hurting the implementation of the peace deal.

“Some of the major challenges that we know is the political instability in Sudan, the government is not stable, there is a lot of political turmoil in the country, and if these things are not resolved then it is going to be very difficult for the agreement to be implemented,” Mathok said.

The agreement signed between the Sudan Sovereign Council led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and various opposition groups has also been slowed down by a lack of funding from the international community.

The Sudan political crisis deepened after Al-Burhan declared a state of emergency on Oct. 25, 2021, and dissolved the Sovereign Council and the transitional government which was headed by the then Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

Mathok said the agreement signed with opposition groups from the Darfur region alone requires the funding of 13 billion U.S. dollars to cover the resettlement of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) and rehabilitation of the affected areas for a period of ten years.

“We have seen also there are differences among the signatories to the peace agreement, since the time they went to Sudan there are a lot of divisions among themselves, we hope that this workshop which is being organized by the government of South Sudan will help in creating harmony and unity among them,” Mathok said.

Salwa Adam, the secretary general of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) faction led by Malik Agar in the Blue Nile region, said the political situation in Khartoum has affected the peace implementation because there is no legitimate government at the moment.

In December 2022, a limited selection of Sudan’s military and civilian political actors signed a Framework Agreement (FA) in order to relaunch the country’s transition to civilian government, but this has not yet materialized. Adam added that failure to establish joint monitoring and evaluation mechanisms has for example caused a resurgence of conflict in Sudan.

Yassir Adha, the representative of the Sudan Sovereign Council, expressed optimism on the peace process succeeding if hold-out opposition groups like the SPLM-N sector led by Abdel Aziz Al-Hilu, and Sudan Liberation Movement under Abdul Wahi Al-Nur join the peace process.

Suliman Mohammed Dibelo, the chairperson of the Sudan Peace Commission, expressed hope with the recent framework agreement reached between the Sudan Sovereign Council and civilian opposition members.

“Sudanese people of different political factions have now opted to reach an agreement, and we hope when they reach an agreement a government will be installed, and the ministers will start acting on implementation of different items in the Juba peace agreement,” he said.