The United Nations has described the recently inked peace agreement between the South Sudanese government and opposition groups as a “big step forward”.

President Salva Kiir together with his chief rival and former deputy, Riek Machar, signed the deal on Sunday in neighbouring Sudan, alongside members of other opposition factions.

David Shearer, head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), explained that it centres on the issue of governance, with Kiir retaining his position while Machar will be named the first of five vice-presidents.

“The deal is a big step forward in terms of bringing peace in South Sudan,” Shearer told UN News, speaking from the capital, Juba, on Monday.

“What it has as yet to do - and the negotiations are ongoing - is how are they going to organise the security on the ground for all of those people, and how is the army going to be reformed: how are they going to bring the fighting groups into the same army?”

He said that there were “a host of other issues” to be resolved, such as future and economic humanitarian policies and programmes.

“So, it’s very much a starting point but it’s a starting point which I think a lot of us didn’t think we would see perhaps two months ago.”

At just seven years old, South Sudan is the world’s youngest nation. However, a December 2013 political impasse between the two rivals, plunged the country into deadly conflict.

Tens of thousands have been killed while more than four million have been displaced, some two million of whom have fled to neighbouring states.