Peace process in South Sudan remains fragile despite progress: UN envoy

United Nations, March 4 : The peace process in South Sudan remains extremely fragile despite some progress in the past four years, said David Shearer, the outgoing top UN envoy for South Sudan.
Shearer, who will leave his post next month as the special representative of the UN secretary-general and head of the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, said the country has made progress both in terms of security and political stability, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.
“At the end of my four years in South Sudan, I look back with a certain level of comfort about how far the country has come,” he told the Security Council in a briefing.
There is a cease-fire, a peace deal, and a transitional government. And local leadership is slowly being installed. The majority of people who flocked to point-of-care sites have either left or now live in newly transitioned camps for internally displaced persons — a result of improved political security, he noted.
However, he warned that the peace process remains extremely fragile.
Many citizens are wary that the political will may falter. They fear the positive progress may collapse, he said. “It is for those people that we, the international community, must remain united and committed to pushing the peace process forward. We can’t sit on the sidelines as spectators. Look back four years. That’s what failure looks like and it’s in no one’s interests to return there.”