The high-level committee for the implementation of the 2018 peace deal and the roadmap has announced that it has drafted an explanatory note on the status of the peace implementation and general elections.

Addressing reporters after a meeting in Juba on Monday evening, the Minister of Petroleum and a member of the committee, Puot Kang Chuol, said they had successfully reviewed the implementation of the roadmap and will submit the final report to the principals on Wednesday.

“We have also drafted an explanatory note, which will be submitted to the principals on Wednesday by this committee, on the status of the implementation of the roadmap. We have again looked at the way forward to what should be done next as the parties to the agreement. We have looked at that, and we will finalize that part on Tuesday. We will submit it together with the review to the principals, who will make the final decision,” Kang said.

 “So we are asking you to bear with us as we are coming closer to the end of this work that we have been doing for the last two months,” he added.

When asked to provide more details on the work they have been doing as committee members, Kang, a member of the opposition SPLM-IO, said: “We have reviewed the implementation of the peace agreement. We have marked it as to what has been completed, what we have started and not finished, and what has not been touched at all.”

When asked again to inform the public if the committee faced any challenges in the review process, the national minister said:” We are working on the document and the way forward, and we will give it to the principals who will decide on the way forward. So the decision on the way forward is not our responsibility.”

South Sudan has been formally at peace since a 2018 agreement that ended a five-year conflict responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Elections scheduled for last year were postponed to this December, but few preparations are in place. 

The feasibility of December 2024 elections — the first since the country gained independence in July 2011 — is increasingly in doubt. 

The original transitional period agreed to in the 2018 peace deal ended on 22 February 2023, while the extended transition period is scheduled to end on 22 February 2025.