Machar calls on all sectors to address the sources of fragility in South Sudan

August 21, 2012 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s vice president, Riek Machar, has called on all the stakeholders in the country to identify and address issues that make the country one of the most fragile states in the world.

South Sudan is one of the 17 countries, known as the G7+, which was founded in 2010 consisting of the country’s considered most likely not achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in 2015.

In its first attempt to assess its fragility with the aim to address the sources, the government on Tuesday organized a workshop involving all the national and international stakeholders to collectively address the situation.

The fragility assessment is a participatory process that aims to build national consensus around the sources of fragility and path to resilience in South Sudan.

In his keynote address to launch the assessment of the country, South Sudan’s vice president, Riek Machar, called on the government, civil society organizations, NGOs, development partners, universities and the private sector to join hands to make South Sudan transit from fragility to stability.

“Each of us, through our various professions and walks of life, will be aware of the challenge that the legacy of decades of conflict, and the ongoing threat of instability, poses to the development of our nation,” partly reads his statement.

Although many of the g7+ countries are rich in resources, they remain the poorest and most vulnerable to internal and external shocks and have the lowest indicators of all the developing countries.

In these countries, it was learnt that processes of political dialogue often fail due to lack of trust, and international partners can often bypass government systems and provide aid in a way that supports short term fixes at the expense of long term capacity building and systems strengthening.

The assessment therefore asserts that peace-building and state-building should form the cornerstone of all development efforts in fragile and post-conflict countries.

In order to exit from fragility South Sudan needs to focus on achieving five core elements for peace and state-building as identified in the Tuesday workshop. These include legitimate politics, security, justice, economic foundation and revenues and services management.

G7+ state members are : Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Guinea Bissau, Haiti, Liberia, Papua, New Guinea, Sierra Leone, The Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Timor-Leste and Togo.

(ST)