South Sudan is one of the world’s most divided and unstable countries. Since achieving statehood in 2011, the country has plunged into civil war (2013-15) and become the scene of some of the worst human rights abuses on the African continent. Despite ongoing political turmoil, states and international institutions have pledged enormous resources to stabilize the country and shore up the current peace process, but have had limited influence in dealing with the effects of…
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CSRF Research Repository
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After several months of political and diplomatic shuttling by mediators, South Sudan finally has a peace deal. Broadly, the new agreement recognises the evolution of the conflict and no longer considers the civil war as binary duel between the two protagonists but rather as involving many actors. It also accepts that Uganda and Sudan, the closest allies to the various conflict parties, play an instrumental role in realising a lasting and sustainable peace agreement. The…
Following the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and the subsequent independence of South Sudan in 2011, many agro-pastoralist and pastoralist areas of the country have experienced an upsurge of livestock raiding, counter raiding and cycles of revenge killing. Eastern Lakes State, in contrast to its neighbor, Western Lakes State, is an exception. Since 2011, there has been a significant reduction in violent conflict between communities in the state. Peace is the Name of Our Cattle-Camp…
When South Sudan’s war began, the Beatles were playing their first hits and reaching the moon was an astronaut’s dream. Half a century later, with millions massacred in Africa’s longest war, the continent’s biggest country split in two. It was an extraordinary, unprecedented experiment. Many have fought, but South Sudan did the impossible, and won. This is the story of an epic fight for freedom. It is also the story of a nightmare. First Raise a…
This study examined the conflict in South Sudan, which started in December 2013 due to political dissatisfaction between President Salva Kiir and his then Vice President Riek Machar. When South Sudan got independence in 2011 through a referendum where more-than 98 percent of the population supported secession from Sudan, the country became a case study for potential secessions in Africa. However, the euphoria of independence quickly evaporated, and immediately replaced by violent conflict. Thus, the…
Publication Summary Based on interviews with various informants, this paper attempts to evaluate the implementation status of the security arrangement provisions of the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS), as well as its future implications for the Security Sector Reforms (SSR) endeavor in South Sudan. Most of the respondents, who are mostly military experts and were intimately involved in the implementation of the security arrangement provisions of ARCISS, opined that the…
This article investigates the implications of women’s exclusion for the nature and durability of peace processes, and whether factors that undermine peace consolidation post-settlement might be prevented through more inclusive peacemaking. It examines the Sudan-South Sudan peace process that produced the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the roles women played in peacemaking and their exclusion from official negotiations, and the sources of insecurity post-CPA. South Sudan’s peace process shows that the exclusion of women can be…
The dynamics of peace and conflict are fundamentally shaped by a politics of scaling difference. Based on the insight that difference is widely associated with both the causes of and cures for violent conflict, this article explores how practices of scaling mediate this duality. Drawing on South Sudan and Kosovo, it is argued that the governance of conflict is characterized by efforts to skilfully accommodate diversity, straddling the line between recognizing, reinforcing, and reconfiguring difference…
The area that is today’s South Sudan was once a marginalized region in the Republic of Sudan administered by tribal chiefs during the British colonial period (1899-1955). In the 1950s, marginalization gave rise to the Anyanya I rebellion, spearheaded by southern Sudanese separatists and resulting in the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972). The war ended after the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, only for another civil war to break out in 1983 instigated by the Sudan…
The proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons (SALW) is one of the most pervasive problems facing South Sudan. This briefing explores Saferworld’s work to identify and improve community-based solutions. In April 2017, with support from United Nations Mines Action Service (UNMAS), Saferworld launched a project to identify and improve community-based solutions to the threats posed by the proliferation and misuse of SALW. With their partners Community Empowerment for Progress Organisation (CEPO) and…
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