Kenya, South Sudan locked in border dispute

South Sudan has summoned Kenya’s envoy to Juba, Samwel Nandwa, to protest an alleged incursion into its territory.

A assertion from South Sudan’s Cabinet of alien Affairs and interdiplomatic Cooperation pronounced Juba wished a diplomatic answer to the dispute.

“Hon Mayiik Ayii Deng met with Kenya’s ambassador to South Sudan (Samuel Nandwa) to discuss areas of mutual interest. Issues relating to our mutual border were raised,” the assertion pronounced, citing the international minister.

“The Minister, on behalf of the Government of South Sudan, wishes to assure all South Sudanese citizens that the highest levels of government are aware of the sensitivities at the border and are working in cooperation with our neighbors to ensure peace, prosperity and maintenance of border integrity,” it pronounced.

Mr Deng met the Kenyan diplomat on Wednesday after clashes between South Sudan’s Toposa and Kenya’s Turkana communities rocked the border.

The 2 pastoral communities routinely cross their borders seeking water and pasture for his or her livestock.

In South Sudan, nearby and state officers inside the jap equatorial state claimed in a number of media interviews final week {that a} convoy of Kenyan safety officers strayed briefly into South Sudanese territory.

This resulted in demonstrations by Taposa youths calling on their countrywide authorities to have interaction the Kenyan authorities to resolve the problem.

Then again, the 2 international locations have element of their border largely undefined on the Ilemi (additionally known as Elemi) Triangle, a sparsely populated place of ​​about 14,000 rectangular kilometers.

Ilemi is positioned on the sting of southern South Sudan, believed to be wealthy in oil, and on the major of Turkana, a Kenyan county the place Tullow Oil learned oil in 2012.

The triangle consists of the areas of Kibish, Lokitaung, Naita, Karebur, Kokuro, Kaikor, Magila, Lorau and Loruth Esekon.

The identify Ilemi is believed to return from a well-knownshows chief of the Anuak, a neighborhood on South Sudan’s border with Ethiopia. The triangle was named in honor of Chief Ilemi Akwon.

It really is dwelling to the Turkana, Didinga, Toposa, Inyangatom and Dassanach communities.

These communities are from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan, however they historically migrate to the triangle to graze their animals.

The Turkana are discovered in South Sudan and Turkana County even as the Didinga are discovered in South Sudan and northeastern Uganda.

In 1986, when the Kenyan authorities revealed a brand new atlas displaying element of the disputed Ilemi Triangle inside its territory, the consequence was a protest from Khartoum.

The Sudanese authorities believed that rebels from the Sudan fellow-creatures’s unrestraint agitation had traded land inside the Elemi Triangle with Kenya.

Khartoum pronounced the triangle was element of its Equatorial domain. When South Sudan gained independence in 2011, the declare to the triangle was transferred to the brand new authorities in Juba.