The Abyei Administrative Area (AAA) is a contested zone located on the central border between South Sudan and Sudan. Its status has remained unresolved since South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011, and the governments failed to agree on the border division. The AAA represents a grazing hub in which both the Dinka Ngok (affiliated with South Sudan) and the Missiriya (affiliated with Sudan) tribal communities interact, sharing natural resources such as grazing land, pastureland…
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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.
The ‘If You are Safe, I am Safe’ strategy for South Sudan proposes to turn the desire for safety from a competitive conflict-causing endeavour to a co-operative peace-building endeavour. Aimed initially at promoting peace between communities, it envisages an active role for both local administration and central government. To do so there must be an understanding of the factors driving conflict, as well as those factors supporting reconciliation.
“Do not remain silent”: Survivors of Sexual violence in South Sudan call for justice and reparations, reveals aggravated acts of sexual violence against thousands of people across the country since hostilities began in December 2013. The report is the result of a joint research project between Amnesty International and 10 South Sudanese human rights defenders. Perpetrators come from both sides of the conflict, pitting the government forces of President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, against opposition…
Why do some peace agreements end armed conflicts whereas others do not? Previous studies have primarily focused on the relation between warring parties and the provisions included in peace agreements. Prominent mediators, however, have emphasised the importance of stakeholders at various levels for the outcome of peace agreements. To match the experience of these negotiators we apply a level-of-analysis approach to examine the contextual circumstances under which peace agreements are concluded. While prominent within the…
Conflict in Unity State broke out in late December 2013, only days after the current conflict began in Juba. Since then, the state has been one of the worst affected by the conflict, and currently hosts the highest reported numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country. Many areas in Unity are largely inaccessible to humanitarian actors due to insecurity and logistical constraints. As a result, only limited information is available on the humanitarian…
The scale and complexity of the current crisis in South Sudan challenges description. The advocacy of journalists and non-governmental organisations – whilst generally based on good intentions – often relies on statistical descriptors, explanations of ‘inter-ethnic violence’, and impersonal stories of victimhood which serve to flatten this heterogeneous emergency. In short, many of these current accounts actually tell us little about the many ways in which new South Sudanese refugees are striving to live in…
In April 2017, I was part of a delegation of South Sudanese experts, activists and a religious leader that travelled to Addis Ababa to meet with policymakers at the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), African Union (AU), United Nations (UN), Ethiopian government and other African and Western governmental organizations. While in Addis, the delegation delivered an urgent message: The situation in South Sudan has reached a tipping point; if the international community does not act…
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…
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…
The report explores some of the issues facing male youth in the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) Bentiu Protection of Civilian (POC) site and in both urban and rural areas of Rubkona county. First, the report explores meanings of “youth” as a social category and dynamics of youth and violence in the current war. It considers ‘types’ of youth and lack of meaningful livelihoods, drawing on the different yet interrelated challenges for urban…
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