The United Nations has called for the “immediate” implementation of a peace deal recently signed between the South Sudanese government and rebel forces loyal to the opposition leader, Reik Machar.

In a statement issued on Friday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and Machar to respect the new ceasefire agreement.

Ban also reminded both sides that time is running out and that they need to use the opportunity of the upcoming negotiations led by East Africa’s regional bloc Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to reach a final agreement aimed at ending the country’s civil war.

On January 21, Kiir and Machar inked a deal in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha as a roadmap toward stopping the deadly clashes in the strife-torn country.

This is while an earlier ceasefire agreement signed in January 2014 had been violated frequently by both sides of the conflict.

Another round of peace negotiations is scheduled to kick off later this month in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa in an attempt to reconcile conflicting groups in South Sudan.

South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Kiir and defectors led by his former deputy Machar around the capital, Juba.

The conflict soon turned into an all-out war between the army and the defectors, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president’s Dinka tribe against Machar’s Nuer ethnic group.

The clashes have left tens of thousands of South Sudanese dead and forced almost two million people to flee their homes in the world’s youngest country.

South Sudan gained independence in July 2011 after its people overwhelmingly voted in a referendum for a split from Sudan.