Following South Sudanese independence in 2011, land reform became a major aspect of state building, partly to address historical injustices and partly to avoid future conflicts around land. In the process, land became a trigger for conflicts, sometimes between communities with no histories of “ethnic conflict.” Drawing on cases in two rural areas in Yei River County in South Sudan, this paper shows that contradictions in the existing legal frameworks on land are mainly to…
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CSRF Research Repository
The CSRF Research Repository aims to support greater contextual knowledge for policy makers, programme managers, and implementers by providing a searchable repository of research, analysis, and resources, and providing periodic updates on new research and analysis.
This paper examines the extent to which women’s issues are addressed in the 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan. It contends that while women’s issues are provided for in some parts of the agreement, opportunities for the inclusion of women were limited by the structure of the peace talks. Moreover, the agreement does not provide for bloc representation of women in the transitional arrangements, which can limit…
Why does South Sudan continue to experience endemic, low intensity conflicts punctuated by catastrophic civil wars? Reporters and analysts often mischaracterise conflicts in the young country of South Sudan as products of divisive ‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ rivalries and political competition over oil wealth. More nuanced analyses by regional experts have focused almost exclusively on infighting among elite politicians and military officers based in Juba and other major cities who use patronage networks to ethnicise conflicts….
Women’s organizations in South Sudan embrace ‘bottom-up’ approach (Annuka, 2015), to peace building, while also pushing for minimum 25% percent quota (Itto, 2006: 58) and later 30% quota (Aweil james Ajith, 2013; Case, 2016) at the decision making levels as stipulated in the constitution of the country. Many of these organizations are off-shoots of women’s movements during the decades of war and after the independence of South Sudan in July 2011, many were formally registered…
Protracted conflict and development in South Sudan: A feminist analysis of women’s subjugation in the making of a nation argues that international interventions in South Sudan from the period of British colonization to present day South Sudan perpetuate and [re]inscribe formations of women’s oppression and agency. Foreign presence affects identity constructions, conflict, and governance. I demonstrate how international interventions, militarization, and protracted conflict, compromise women’s rights, health, and self-determination as they permeate understandings of gender,…
In the past two decades, China’s national oil companies have become new players in the international oil industry. When they first entered the global scene in the 1990s, Chinese NOCs held few competitive advantages over international oil companies. They lacked the organizational capabilities and expertise to manage large projects overseas and had little experience with political and security risk. This article argues that political, social and security dynamics in the host countries of Chinese NOCs…
This article looks at the history of post-war state-building in South Sudan through a study of one of the region’s many return migration projects. South Sudan was arguably the subject of the first state-led mass repatriation campaign of twentieth-century Africa, after the first civil war that escalated in 1963 and ended in 1972 with the Addis Ababa Agreement. Using archival material from the newly reformulated South Sudan National Archives in Juba, this paper examines this…
This article considers the intractable conflicts and human rights situations in Darfur, Sudan and South Sudan, respectively, against the international responses they elicited. Intractable conflicts are conflicts that have lasted for a long time with resistance to settlement despite various attempts at intervention and conciliation. These conflicts from neighbouring nations have both elicited extensive engagement from the international and regional communities but, while some clarity regarding the direction to be taken has been achieved in…
South Sudan’s administrative boundaries stem from the colonial period. Since it gained independence in 2011, subsequent rounds of reshuffling of the political system, internal borders, and power relations have been a source of confusion, elite manipulation, and conflict throughout the country. This paper explores the impact of this confusion by focusing on multiple shifting linkages between administrative boundaries and identities and shows how the mobilization of ethnic identities has become central to territorial claims and…
Since the late 1990s, researchers have been predicting that the era of neutrality in aid politics is coming to an end and that foreign organizations will have to take a more engaged stance. Yet while the boundaries between humanitarianism and development are fading, in some cases the neutrality norm is actually expanding rather than giving way to an engaged paradigm. Recognizing that the principles of neutrality and independence have different meanings for different actors and…
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