Sudan, South Sudan joint border commission accord

The Sudanese-South Sudanese Joint Border Commission (JBC) concluded its third meeting in Addis Ababa on Wednesday with the signing of an agreement for the establishment of an Escrow Account to meet the cost of border demarcation between the two countries.

The three-day meeting last week was held under the auspices of the AU Border Programme (AUBP), in accordance with the JBC Resolutions adopted in the South Sudanese capital of Juba, on 8 February this year.

The agreement was signed by Michael Makuei Lueth, the South Sudanese Minister of Information and Broadcasting, and Dr El Rasheed Haroun Adam, State Minister at the Presidency, in the presence of representatives of the AUBP, the AU Sudan-South Sudan Liaison Office reported in a press release on Friday.

The meeting also finalised the list of members of the Joint Technical Team (JTT), consisting of equal numbers of surveyors, cartographers, and other relevant experts from each country, as proposed by the JBC session of February 2015. The Terms of Reference for the Joint Demarcation Committee (JDC) to manage and supervise the boundary demarcation exercise were adopted too.

“The agreement marks a new step in the implementation of the Cooperation Agreements signed between Sudan and South Sudan in September 2012, under the auspices of the AU High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP),” the press release read.

“It also constitutes an encouraging development in the implementation of the AUBP, whose two core objectives are the delimitation and demarcation of African borders, where such an exercise has not yet taken place, and the promotion of cross-border cooperation, notably on the basis of the AU Convention on Cross-Border Cooperation, also known as the Niamey Convention.”