The final communiqué issued by the Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) High-Level Ad Hoc Committee for South Sudan (C5), chaired by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and delivered on the margins of the AU Assembly in Addis Ababa on February 15, 2026, reflects the Union’s continued diplomatic engagement in South Sudan’s fragile political transition.
However, a critical analysis reveals that the communiqué prioritizes diplomatic symbolism and electoral timelines over structural conflict resolution and meaningful implementation of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS).
At its core, the communiqué appears to serve more as a diplomatic reaffirmation of the AU’s relevance than as a substantive intervention designed to address the causes of South Sudan’s political paralysis. While it rightly acknowledges the deteriorating security situation and emphasizes the urgency of restoring stability, the communiqué fails to confront the central obstacle undermining R-ARCSS: the absence of genuine political will among the signatory parties.
The crisis in South Sudan is not merely institutional but fundamentally political. The agreement’s stagnation reflects a deep trust deficit among the political elites, who continue to prioritize regime survival and power consolidation over national transformation. Without restoring mutual confidence and enforcing accountability, declarations alone cannot revive a peace process that has gradually eroded since its revitalization.
Moreover, the communiqué does not address the diminishing credibility of the agreement’s guarantors, whose passive role has contributed to the normalization of non-compliance. The lack of enforcement mechanisms has allowed parties to selectively implement provisions, weakening the agreement’s integrity and increasing the risk of renewed conflict.
A key weakness of the C5 declaration lies in its reliance on the frameworks that have demonstrably failed to ensure compliance. The communiqué does not introduce new enforcement tools, monitoring mechanisms, or accountability structures capable of reversing the current trajectory.
This reflects a broader institutional limitation within the AU’s conflict management architecture: a preference for consensus-based diplomacy over coercive enforcement. While this approach preserves political relationships among member states, it limits the AU’s capacity to compel compliance in situations where domestic actors benefit from maintaining the status quo.
To address this gap, the involvement of external actors such as the Troika and the European Union could strengthen monitoring, introduce diplomatic leverage, and increase the political costs of non-compliance. Such multilateral engagement would help balance the AU’s diplomatic legitimacy with the enforcement capacity required to sustain implementation.
The communiqué’s emphasis on conducting a General Election by December 2026 represents its most politically consequential—and potentially destabilizing—position. By focusing on electoral timelines without addressing the structural prerequisites for credible elections, the declaration risks legitimizing a procedural transition without substantive democratic transformation.
Free and credible elections require minimum institutional and political conditions, many of which remain unfulfilled:
- Security sector reform and unification of armed forces
- Drafting and adoption of a permanent constitution
- Boundary demarcation and national census
- Establishment of the hybrid court for transitional justice
- Reform of political party laws
- Protection of civic and political freedoms
Without these foundational reforms, elections risk becoming instruments of political legitimization rather than mechanisms of democratic accountability. In fragile post-conflict environments, premature elections often reinforce power asymmetries and may trigger renewed violence rather than peaceful political competition.
Thus, the current electoral focus risks transforming elections into a symbolic exercise designed to confer legitimacy on the existing power structures rather than a genuine democratic transition.
The communiqué reflects a familiar pattern in international peace processes: prioritizing elite political stability over societal transformation. Power-sharing arrangements and electoral roadmaps are often used as tools to stabilize political elites, even when deeper structural reforms remain unaddressed.
This approach may temporarily reduce overt conflict, but does not resolve the structural drivers of instability, including:
- Militarization of politics
- Weak state institutions
- Economic collapse and patronage systems
- Lack of transitional justice
- Exclusion of civil society and marginalized communities
As a result, peace becomes procedural rather than transformative, preserving the political order that contributed to the conflict in the first place.
The communiqué’s current trajectory risks producing what political scientists describe as “legitimacy without reform”—a scenario in which formal democratic processes are conducted without substantive institutional change.
Such an outcome carries significant risks:
- Elections may trigger disputes over legitimacy
- Political exclusion could fuel armed opposition
- Public trust in democratic institutions may erode further
- Conflict may re-emerge under new political configurations
In this context, elections conducted without reform may not represent the culmination of the peace process, but rather the beginning of a new phase of instability.
For peace to become sustainable, South Sudan requires more than elite-level agreements and electoral timelines. It requires a genuinely inclusive political process that addresses the root causes of conflict, including governance failures, economic collapse, and social fragmentation.
A credible transition must prioritize:
- Institutional reform before electoral competition
- Accountability through transitional justice mechanisms
- Security sector transformation
- Inclusive national dialogue involving civil society
- Economic recovery and service delivery
Peace must be measured, not by the holding of elections alone, but by the restoration of state legitimacy, citizen trust, and institutional stability.
The African Union C5 communiqué represents an important diplomatic gesture, but falls short of providing the structural and political framework to rescue South Sudan’s fragile peace process. Its emphasis on electoral timelines without addressing foundational reforms risks prioritizing political legitimacy over democratic transformation.
Without renewed political will, strengthened enforcement mechanisms, and inclusive institutional reforms, R-ARCSS risks becoming a symbolic agreement rather than a functional roadmap for peace.
South Sudan’s future stability depends, not on procedural milestones alone, but on a genuine commitment to structural transformation, accountability, and inclusive governance.
The writer, Jago Daniel, is a South Sudanese political activist. He can be contacted on jagoawijak2005@gmail.com
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.