Armed youth walk through a village in South Sudan’s Pibor region. Photo: AFP

The Chief Administrator of Greater Pibor Administrative Area is currently visiting villages of Pibor and Likuangole counties to disseminate a message of peaceful co-existence among local youths and neighboring communities.

Pibor Information Minister Jacob Werchum said the tour is being initiated ahead of the dry season to sensitize wandering herders on the need for peace when they share grazing land and other resources.

This is because incidents of cattle raiding and child abductions involving local youth and neighboring counterparts are most reported in the dry season.

Minister Wechum added that Chief Administrator Gola Boyoi has so far visited nine villages in the two counties.

“The chief administrator is currently touring the villages of Likuangole Pibor and counties, delivering the messages of peace to the youths as the dry season approaches. He is encouraging the youths to remain calm as the dry season comes,” he said.

“Normally when those nomads travel with their cattle searching for water and pasture, this is where the incidents happen. So we advised them to stay with their neighboring communities at the broader point.”

For years, rampant inter-communal violence characterized by cross-border cattle raids, revenge killings and child abductions involving armed youth has plagued communities in Jonglei, GPAA, Eastern Equatoria and Central Equatoria.

A 2017 research by a local government administrator revealed that cases of child abduction had become rampant in the Lirya, Lokiliri, and Lowoi Payams of Juba County between 1989 and 2017.

The same research noted that 36 people were killed by abductors in the process of kidnaping children in the same period.

In May 2024, the parliament issued several resolutions, including setting up community policing to address recurrent incidents of cattle raiding and child abduction among others in the country.

The resolutions were reached following a debate on the recent attack on cattle-keeping communities in Kauto Payam of Kapoeta East County in Eastern Equatoria State – blamed on armed youth from GPAA.

This led to the killing of dozens of civilians, abduction of unspecified number of women and children, and the raiding of hundreds of cattle.

UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warned in February 2024 that the nature of child abduction is shifting from a cultural issue to a political and serious crime of human trafficking.