July 9th 2019 (Nyamilepedia) – A joint security delegation from the parties to the revitalized peace agreement have visited military bases in the country’s former Northern Bahr El-Ghazal state, a senior official from security arrangement committee said in a statement.
Deng Deng Loul, an official from the Area Joint Military Ceasefire Committee (AJMCC), said the group from the AJMCC and the Joint Transitional Security Committee (JTSC) have visited military bases in Pantiit that houses government and opposition forces.
The visit by the joint military ceasefire monitoring body, Deng said, is aimed at assessing the areas where the armed opposition forces and government’s SSPDF troops are based so that the process of operationalizing the cantonment sites can be begun soon.
“AJMCC and JTSC have visited military bases in Pantiit, former NBGs to conduct an assessment of the cantonment sites as AJMCC plans to begin the process of arranging the forces of the opposition factions and government forces,” Deng said in a statement.
South Sudan government and opposition groups signed a revitalized peace agreement in September last year in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in a bid to end the five-year-old conflict.
The agreement provides for the cantonment of opposition and government troops as a part of a permanent ceasefire agreement signed in Khartoum in June that year.
As ten months slipped away since the signing of the peace deal, the establishment of cantonment sites remains as one of the pending critical tasks in the implementation of the Revitalized Peace Agreement.
Last month, the East African regional bloc, IGAD, called on the parties in South Sudan to focus effectively on transitional security arrangements, which would pave the way for the timely implementation of other pending tasks.
