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In December 2020, the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee (NDSC) published its concluding report regarding the National Dialogue (ND) process.  This final report summarizes the Committee’s main findings and respective recommendations. A vast majority of the views criticizes the SPLM and its leaders for a colossal failure to govern South Sudan. The NDSC asserts that this failure is rooted in a power struggle and political stalemate, which must be broken if the country is…

This article critiques explanations of South Sudan’s armed conflicts since 2013 that have relied on over-simplified theories of identity or monetised politics. Instead, this article explores the renegotiation of the meanings of monetary exchanges in politics and the inter-linked remaking of political identities. Warring coalitions in South Sudan have mobilised support using different notions of political communities and divergent ideas about the role of money in defining relationships. Some political communities have faced moral condemnation…

Addressing the legacies of mass human rights violations is a daunting task for any society emerging from conflict. The challenges are all the more complex in South Sudan, where people have struggled with civil wars, state repression, and developmental neglect for generations. With the current conflict, transitional justice – or the range of judicial and nonjudicial measures that countries emerging from a period of conflict or authoritarian rule use to address past human right violations…

Introduction This report presents the main findings of a justice landscape assessment that the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) conducted between June and July 2020. In recent years, progress towards the Hybrid Court for South Sudan, as provided for in the September 2018 peace agreement, has stalled. Protracted delays in implementing the peace agreement, ongoing insecurity, and a lack of political will to address crimes committed during the conflict have all contributed to the political…

Abstract South Sudanese fled their communities in large numbers following the outbreak of political violence in 2013, with an estimated 4.5 million forcibly displaced by mid-2018. Of neighbouring countries, Uganda hosts the greatest number of South Sudanese refugees. Based on qualitative data collected in 2018 and 2019 in two refugee settlements in the West Nile sub-region of Uganda, this article examines the social connectedness of refugees during their flight and after their arrival in Uganda….

Background Contextual factors including poverty and inequitable gender norms harm refugee adolescent and youths’ wellbeing. Our study focused on Bidi Bidi refugee settlement that hosts more than 230,000 of Uganda’s 1.4 million refugees. We explored contextual factors associated with wellbeing among refugee adolescents and youth aged 16–24 in Bidi Bidi refugee settlement. Conclusions Resource scarcity produced pervasive stressors among refugee adolescents and youth. Findings signal the importance of gender transformative approaches to SGBV prevention that…

This report is the result of a short-term study on the traditional and changing roles of gender and women in peace-building. The study involved field research in five locations (Aweil, Bentiu, Bor, Rumbek and Torit). The purpose of the study is to research how the traditional and changing roles of women/girls and men/boys, conflict dynamics in South Sudan and to recommend to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), potential partners, on possible further peace initiatives….

This paper examines the 1994 Declaration of Principles (DoP) for the resolution of the Sudanese civil war, adopted by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). This was the only occasion on which an African inter-state organization included separation as an option for resolving a civil war. It was the basis for South Sudan’s independence in 2011. The DoP was drafted by the Ethiopian government, and imposed on belligerent parties, both of which were, at the…

Abstract The puzzle of the African Union mediation is that it enjoys regional effectiveness in leading peace processes and yet often fails to prevent atrocity crimes. While existing studies focus on the lack of capacity to explain failures, the author draws on atrocity mediation literature that emphasizes coercive strategies for ripening to explore widely significant factors associated with the AU mediation. The author adopts the “framework of mediator behavior” in international mediation studies to analyze…

ABSTRACT The development of Intelligence Studies has provided new and exciting insights into war, societies, ideologies, institutions, and even cultures and mindsets, even if the geographical reach of these studies has been largely limited to the West. One area that remains under-studied in general is that of insurgent intelligence, thereby underplaying the significance of a factor that can be pivotal in any armed conflict. This is particularly the case with regard to Africa. We still…

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