South Sudan Women Leaders for Peace are calling on the warring parties to stop fighting and focus on developing the country.

SSWLP’s Dr Esterina Novella says that peace is paramount if development is to take place.

“We should not be thinking of fighting, of killing one another. We should be thinking of how can we develop this nation,” Dr Novella told Eye Radio’s Dawn Show.

“Our people need services, our people need health services to be improved, education, roads, they need food on their table, they need all this and we are supposed to bring all this on their table, not agony, not crying, not pain,’’ she said.

Dr Novella says SSWLP has distributed food to Internally Displaced Persons but that “the needs are enormous”.

The UN says up to 180,000 people have been displaced since fighting erupted on 15^th December.