Apuk Ayuel Mayen

𝗢𝗻 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁

Before the negotiations began, the mediators gathered both delegations to agree on the principles that would guide the process. It is a familiar ritual. Every negotiation needs rules before it can have results.

Among the principles proposed was one that found easy acceptance:

𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗹 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱.

No one objected.

The principle meant that no delegation would be expected to settle what mattered most while waiting for movement elsewhere. Every issue would remain connected until the negotiations had run their course.

I was a member of the Joint Technical Secretariat, assigned by the Government of Southern Sudan.

At first, the principle hardly came up. There was no reason for it to. Like trust itself, it sat quietly in the background. You do not think much about trust until something makes you question it.

As the negotiations unfolded, however, the issues began to separate. The most contentious questions were referred to the Presidency, while the remaining issues stayed with the negotiators. It seemed a practical arrangement. Some matters are simply too important for negotiators alone.

The work went on. Days became weeks, and weeks became months. Drafts accumulated. Language softened here and hardened there. Some issues moved. Others never seemed to leave the room.

Gradually, another pattern emerged.

I began to feel that the issues left at the negotiating table increasingly reflected Sudan’s immediate interests. Those referred to the Presidency—including Abyei and other contested areas, issues that lay at the heart of South Sudan’s national interest—remained suspended between hope and stalemate.

Outside the negotiating halls, the mood was changing too. In Juba and across the border states, mixed reactions and protests against signing the agreements gathered momentum. Many feared that South Sudan was being asked to conclude what was negotiable while carrying home the burden of what remained unresolved.

You could feel that anxiety in the room.

It was in the conversations, in the long pauses, and in the way each new draft was read more carefully than the one before.

Pressure came from every direction.

Outside, people urged the delegation not to sign while the unresolved issues remained outstanding.

Inside, the mediators and international partners urged that the agreements already reached should not be delayed by those still awaiting resolution.

Between those two positions sat the negotiators, trying to remain faithful to the principle that had brought everyone to the table.

When agreement was finally reached on the issues before the negotiators, the mood changed. Encouragement slowly became expectation, and expectation became pressure. The calls to sign grew louder.

The South Sudan delegation hesitated.

Not because agreement had not been reached, but because the principle that had guided the negotiations no longer seemed to be guiding them.

If nothing was agreed until everything was agreed, how had some agreements become ready while the rest remained waiting?

I remained with the negotiations until they concluded. By the time the agreements were signed, I was no longer there. I watched the final chapter from afar. Reports reached us of mounting pressure, signatures affixed, mixed reactions and protests in Juba and the border states, and accusations that the negotiators had compromised the country’s interests.

Yet the issues referred to the Presidency remained where they had always been.

Unresolved.

I have returned to those months many times since. Not because negotiations are ever perfect. They rarely are. But because they taught me something about trust.

I learnt that a mediator’s influence does not rest on authority alone. It rests on the confidence of both parties that the same principles will be applied with equal fidelity, especially when doing so becomes difficult.

The moment a principle appears to advance one party’s interests while asking the other to compromise, it stops feeling like a principle. It begins to feel like a strategy.

And trust quietly leaves.

Once that happens, persuasion gives way to pressure. Agreements may still be signed. They may even endure. But something important has already been lost.

More than a decade later, several of the issues referred to the Presidency remain unresolved.

Sometimes I wonder whether the outcome might have been different had the principle that opened the negotiations remained the principle that guided them to their conclusion.

𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗹 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱.

I have thought about those words many times since.

Perhaps trust begins there.

In believing that what we agree at the beginning will still matter when the negotiations become difficult.

— 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻