The disputed Abyei Area encircled in yellow

The National Dialogue Steering Committee has passed a resolution calling on the governments of South Sudan and Sudan to recognize the results of the Abyei referendum.

The Abyei Area is an area on the border between Sudan and South Sudan that has been accorded “special administrative status” by the 2004 Protocol on the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

On the 31^st October 2013, the Abyei Area Community Referendum Commission declared that nearly 100 percent voted to join South Sudan.

However, the government of South Sudan refused to officially recognize the results, despite several calls by the area residents for the parliament in Juba to endorse their decision.

Since then, the area’s status remains unresolved.

But members of the ND Steering Committee in Juba now believe that only the two governments of Sudan and South Sudan can resolve the status of Abyei.

Speaking during a plenary meeting yesterday, a member – Francis Mading – said the Abyei question would form part of the final agenda of the national dialogue national conference slated for the 26^th of March 2020.

“In the end, the two governments have to agree based on the agreements as they are, and the resolutions of the Security Council. But in the end, nothing will move forward without an agreement between the two countries,” Mading, who himself comes from Abyei, stressed.

“So what the document does is it simply gives the history of the area, gives the history of the decisions made and calls upon the governments to move forward with implementing what has been agreed upon.”

The Abyei question would form part of the final agenda of the National Dialogue national conference slated for 26 March 2020.

“Our resolution would be bitter-in a sense that either Abyei is given a status of a state of its own so that all the resources of Abyei are used by the Abyei people, not necessarily divided by the north or south or southern Kordufan,” said another member of the committee, Tulio Odongi.

Last year, President Salva Kiir entrusted Deng Alor with the Abyei area dossier, to follow up on the resolution of the final status of the region.

Alor is yet to make public statement on any progress he has made so far.