After five years of fighting, which displaced more than a million people and killed more than 400,000, the two warring factions agreed to talks along with a host of other groups that had joined each side during the war. They ultimately signed the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) after several proposed peace frameworks had failed.

The peace deal was facilitated by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) trading bloc. It was meant to see the two warring factions unite their armies under a single unit, write a new constitution, prepare for general elections, organise a census and disarm all other armed groups. None of those reforms has been instituted, and violence from local or armed ethnic groups has continued intermittently in parts of the country.

In May, some hold-out groups were invited to new peace talks, the Tumaini Peace Initiative, led by Kenya. Parties promised to renounce violence. However, Machar’s SPLM/IO opposed the process, saying it could affect some of the terms agreed in the 2018 peace deal.