NEW YORK – South Sudan’s Vice President Josephine Lagu has told the UN General Assembly the government considers resumption of Tumaini Peace Initiative with holdout groups, just a month after a senior official responsible for the 2018 peace implementation pronounced the Kenya-led process dead.
The talks were abandoned in early 2025 following wide-ranging differences between the government delegation and the group of holdout political and military movements that now calls itself the United People’s Alliance (UPA).
Vice President Lagu told world leaders on September 25 that Juba was open to reviving the talks if the regional and international partners would facilitate it.
She further urged international pressure on the alliance to renounce violence.
“South Sudan remains open to meaningful dialogue with other holdout groups. In this regard, the government is considering resumption of Tumaini Initiative and welcomes facilitation from regional and other partners,” Lagu said.
“We urge the region and international community to encourage the holdout groups to renounce violence and engage in political dialogue.”
The announcement is a significant U-turn as it comes after Presidential Advisor and head of the government negotiators Gen. Kuol Manyang Juuk pronounced the Tumaini Peace Initiative dead and defunct, in an interview with Eye Radio news outlet last month.
Manyang said the talks had deviated from its original mandate and attempted to override the existing Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS), signed in 2018.
“The R-ARCSS has not been dissolved, so it cannot be replaced by the Tumaini. All that they have quoted is 80% of the chapters in the R-ARCSS incorporated into the Tumaini,” he said.
“It’s Tumaini 10 percent, which was not included in the R-ARCSS because you add the few to the majority, not the majority to the few.”
In response, the United People’s Alliance (UPA) said the transitional government intentionally killed the Nairobi-led peace process, months after the process was quietly suspended.
Speaking to the independent Radio Tamazuj, UPA Secretary-General Lual Dau accused Gen. Kuol of being handpicked by Kiir to sabotage the Tumaini Initiative, a process he said was designed to “rescue the country from collapse.”
“The statement made by Gen. Kuol Manyang did come as a surprise to us because he was brought to kill the Tumaini Initiative,” Dau said.
“He did not kill Tumaini only, he also came and killed the R-ARCSS, and as a result of this, the first vice president has been under detained for a long period of time. So we can conclude that the 2018 peace agreement is dead and the Tumaini Initiative has now been killed.”
Launched on May 9, 2024, in the Kenyan Capital Nairobi, Tumaini Peace Initiative is a high-level mediation for the conflict in South Sudan by incorporating all the holdout groups that have not signed the 2018 R-ARCSS.