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Conflicts in Africa are increasingly becoming violent and endemic. Many of these conflicts are related to crises of identities, struggles for resources and power contestations. A few of these conflicts escalate to self-determination, separatist movements, and secession. These conflicts mostly transcend national borders and trigger the alteration and redesigning of national borders, which itself becomes a source of continued violent conflicts across borders. For instance, the attainment of independence by South-Sudan in 2013 has raised…

This article does not aim to extensively cover South Sudan’s relations with each of the three countries, but to provide an overview of the state of affairs of the relations. Thus, the article is more concerned with the way forward on how South Sudan should manage the competing interests of the three powers and utilize the three capitals to its advantage. The article examines the three capitals of South Sudan and explores the competing interests…

This case study is one of three on the conflict sensitivity (CS) facilities in Libya, South Sudan, and Yemen that were produced between April and September 2021. It offers an overview about the origin, approaches, evolution and learning of the CSRF in South Sudan. Download

South Sudan’s rotten state finances are derailing the young country from its already fraught path to peace and stability after a brutal civil war. Top officials hold the country’s oil riches close, barring scrutiny of spending and allowing rampant misappropriation of funds. This slush-fund governance is at the heart of South Sudan’s system of winner-take-all politics and helps explain why so much went so wrong so quickly after independence in 2011. The peace deal signed…

The Small Arms Survey’s Mapping Actors and Alliances Project for South Sudan (MAAPSS) held its sixth closed-door webinar on Thursday 26 August. The webinar focused on analyzing the recent split in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO), at a state-by-state level. The webinar also gave attention to the way the SPLA-IO split has affected alliances in Sudan, and how that split is in turn transformed by the ongoing tensions between Hemedti’s Rapid Support…

This report presents the results of a conflict assessment carried out in Maban County, South Sudan in October-November 2020 by the Danish Refugee Council’s Peacebuilding unit (also known as Danish Demining Group – DDG). Maban County in Upper Nile State is a complex area that has a long history of conflict and is of key strategic importance in South Sudan’s wars. This situation was further complicated by the arrival of refugees in 2011 from the…

The October/November 2020 Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis process in South Sudan broke down when the South Sudan IPC Technical Working Group (TWG) was unable to reach technical consensus on the severity of food insecurity in six critical counties. In response, and following a request from the Government of South Sudan (GoSS), the three IPC resource partners – United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office…

Do states circumvent embargoes by supplying weapons across borders to sanctioned countries? We report evidence that arms imports systematically increase in the neighborhood of conflict states under an embargo. Using several alternative research-design specifications, we contend that this pattern is consistent with arms exporters shifting the arms trade to neighbors of conflict states under sanctions, where it is easier to move arms clandestinely across the border. Despite the lack of direct evidence of clandestine cross-border…

This report examines the intersection between conflict and connectivity, including social media. The report identifies five factors that shape the nexus between conflict and connectivity, including infrastructure, population density, a fluctuating economy, third party interference and digital media. The report provides a set of recommendations on how to leverage the benefits of digital technology in peacebuilding. Although dated, this report resonates with the current ban on the use of social media in the country following…

This report looks at cooperation between the military and human rights components of the UN peace operations in South Sudan and Mali. The authors identified cultural differences between military and human rights components and turnover among the military peace keepers as key challenges for both missions, and areas of good practice that can address these challenges, such as information-sharing, joint coordination mechanisms, communications, and advocacy. Recommendations include the need to revisit the frequency of military…

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