Conflict

February 2020 saw the formation of the executive of the Revitalised Transitional Government of National Unity (RTGoNU). Since then fighting between the signatories to the Revitalised Agreement on Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (RARCSS) has been significantly reduced, as parties broadly respect the ceasefire. However, although the agreement largely brought an end to violence between signatories, South Sudan continues to experience significant levels of organised violence. The scope and intensity of this violence at times match – or even surpass – that of the national civil war. To describe organised violence in South Sudan, terms like cattle raiding and revenge, ethnic or tribal violence, and inter-communal violence are widely employed.

This effort does not seek to eliminate the usage of terms such as cattle raid or inter-communal violence, as the occurrence of these events and the literal meaning of these terms remains. The purpose of this document, however, is to support a diversity of organizations and personnel engaging with issues of peace and conflict in South Sudan in pursuing greater and more accurate understanding of conflict dynamics. This document proposes revised terminology, including three categories of organised violence: national, sub-national, and localised violence. To place organised violence within the proposed categories, an analytical framework is provided, based on the key characteristics of violence: purpose, severity, and tools.

Political tensions in former Western Equatoria state rose steadily throughout South Sudan’s 2013–15 civil war, culminating in clashes during the months and weeks leading up to the August 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS) between President Salva Kiir and the opposition leader, Vice President Riek Machar. During the war, Western Equatoria’s populist governor, and frequent Juba critic, Joseph Bakosoro, flirted with defection from Kiir’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) but remained in his governor post until Kiir sacked him in the run-up to the accord. In the months following the peace deal, full conflict erupted across the state (see map).

The Western Equatoria war theatre consists of three primary armed groups with independent command and control. All of the groups share some origins in the Arrow Boys, a network of community defence militias mobilized to combat the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and unwanted cattle herders. Two factions—one in Mundri under Wesley Welebe, the other, more dispersed, under Alfred Fatuyo—have declared their allegiance to the SPLM-in- Opposition (SPLM–IO). After the peace accord, Machar appointed both Welebe and Fatuyo major generals. A third group, led by defected security officers, rejected the SPLM–IO and signed a peace deal aimed at reintegration into the armed forces in April 2016.

The ambiguous and unresolved inclusion of the armed groups in the ARCSS—or their exclusion from it—continues drive the conflict. Both Fatuyo and Welebe maintained links to the SPLM–IO throughout the war. Whereas Fatuyo clearly did not join the opposition movement until after the peace accord, Welebe’s ties to the group were stronger.

Anti-government grievances are widespread and often expressed as opposition to the Dinka ethnic group, and its political elite, specifically. While partially rooted in longstanding animosities, such sentiment has intensified since independence, with accusations that the SPLM’s Bahr al Ghazal Dinka elite promised shared power but then championed tribal interest. Equatorians primarily cite redirected national revenue, impunity for incursions by armed cattle herders, land-grabbing, and political marginalization. (According to the paramount chief of the Azande, Wilson Hassan Peni, the Azande did not have an officer at the rank of major general at the beginning of 2015. The Azande are one of several ethnic groups claiming to be the third-largest in South Sudan behind the Dinka and Nuer.) Western Equatoria is an opposition stronghold, but the armed groups are poorly supplied and often retreat in the face of government counter-insurgency. Some early community support for the armed leaders has waned even as government military abuses amplify resentments. Community elites are divided on the wisdom and feasibility of seeking an armed solution or aligning politically with Machar. Humanitarian consequences in the war theatres have been devastating, since the counter-insurgency strategy of security hardliners seeks to punish entire communities and depopulate rebel strongholds. Armed-group withdrawals from government attack have left civilian populations vulnerable.

In the aftermath of the peace deal, Western Equatoria in particular turned into a stage for contesting the new disposition of power in the country; the conflict must be understood in the context of the new power framework created by the ARCSS.

Sudanese, South Sudanese, and African refugee communities in Cairo, Egypt have raised the issue of gang violence as a major concern for their communities for over a decade. Despite the damaging effects violence has on refugee communities, humanitarian organizations in Cairo have only launched a limited number of interventions to address gang violence due its complicated and sensitive nature.

This report analyzes Sudanese and South Sudanese gang violence, focusing on how conceptions of masculinity reproduce violence and influence young people as they opt to join neighborhood groups. The report explores refugee communities’ grassroots efforts to reduce violence and shows how these efforts, while fragmented due to a lack of support, have positive tangible effects. Lastly, the report analyzes whether evidence-based models for violence prevention fit the local context and makes recommendations for how humanitarian organizations could use these models to support and strengthen refugee community violence prevention efforts.

This paper takes a localized conflict over a non-demarcated stretch of the Uganda–South Sudan boundary in 2014 as a starting point for examining the history of territorial state formation on either side of this border since its colonial creation in 1914. It argues that the conflict was an outcome of the long-term constitution of local government territories as patches of the state, making the international border simultaneously a boundary of the local state. Some scholars have seen the limited control of central governments over their borderlands and the intensification of local territorialities as signs of African state fragmentation and failure. But the article argues that this local territoriality should instead be seen as an outcome of ongoing state-formation processes in which state territory has been co-produced through local engagement and appropriation. The paper is thus of wider relevance beyond African or postcolonial history, firstly in contributing a spatial approach to studies of state formation which have sought to replace centre–periphery models with an emphasis on the centrality of the local state. Secondly it advances the broader field of borderlands studies by arguing that international boundaries have been shaped by processes of internal territorialisation as well as by the specific dynamics of cross-border relations and governance. Thirdly it advocates a historical and processual approach to understanding territory, arguing that the patchwork of these states has been fabricated and reworked over the past century, entangling multiple, changing forms and scales of territory in the ongoing constitution of state boundaries.

In this brief Saferworld provides a context update about the current situation in Maridi – one of eight counties in Western Equatoria in South Sudan. Saferworld presents safety and security challenges for communities, local government, sub-national and national governments as well as the international community to consider and we provide recommendations for how best to address these challenges.

In contexts of armed conflict, international humanitarian organisations increasingly rely on local and national actors to deliver aid. South Sudan is no exception: while international organisations have worked with and through South Sudanese organisations for decades, the number of local and national NGOs involved in the South Sudanese humanitarian response has increased substantially since the outbreak of widespread armed conflict in 2013. The number of South Sudanese NGOs registered as members of the South Sudan NGO Forum has also grown, from 92 in 2012 to 263 in 2019. The proliferation of South Sudanese NGOs and their increasingly central role in the humanitarian response has been driven, in part, by the significant access constraints and risks associated with operating in South Sudan. International actors increasingly depend on South Sudanese NGOs to reach conflict-affected communities. These shifts are also taking place in the context of global commitments to ‘localise’ humanitarian response, with humanitarian organisations and donor governments committing to shift power and resources closer to affected populations.
South Sudan provides an opportunity for us to learn about the realities of implementing these localisation commitments in the context of protracted, complex crises, including armed conflicts. While there is a desire among many international organisations to localise humanitarian response, there are also concerns that the national NGO sector can be more easily captured by political interests that contradict humanitarian principles, and that humanitarian funds can be diverted to resource violent political economies. In South Sudan, violent conflict has been consistently driven by political structures in which claims on power can be made through violence and loyalties can be bought with money. This raises questions over how national organisations (and humanitarian assistance more broadly) play into this marketplace of money and power.
This report moves beyond abstract assumptions and global-level debates to understand the reality of the struggles and strategies of local and national organisations during complex emergencies. We focus on the histories, politico-economic dynamics and everyday realities of South Sudanese NGOs during South Sudan’s armed conflicts and intermittent periods of peace over the last four decades. We draw on consultations with over 200 people in six sites across South Sudan, including urban and rural areas, and sites controlled by rebel forces as well as sites controlled by the government. We consider South Sudanese NGOs’ institutional development and funding sources, as well as the backgrounds and motivations of their founders and staff. The report focuses primarily on the perspectives and experiences of those working for local and national NGOs, as well as local communities, authorities and former staff, thus bringing these local perspectives to the global debate on localisation.
By starting from the perspective of South Sudan and drawing on detailed ethnographic and historical research in sites across South Sudan, this report is able to make a rare, locally informed contribution to these global debates. This allows us to see the everyday efforts and motivations of South Sudanese NGOs, as well as noticing the structural issues within the aid sector which elevate the risks they face and, over time, reproduce a lack of trust in South Sudanese NGOs.

This research examines engagement in diaspora philanthropy through the lens of Lost Boys of Sudan and their founding of small international nonprofit service organizations based in the United States. The authors seek to understand refugees’ motivations to take upon themselves leadership roles in their local United States communities and in the provision of goods and services to their homeland, South Sudan. By becoming founders of international service nonprofits, Lost Boys make meaning of their experiences and are able to motivate local support in their United States communities to give to distant communities in South Sudan.

Background: Decades of war left the Republic of South Sudan with a fragile health system that has remained deprived of resources since the country’s independence. The authors describe the coverage of interventions for women’s and children’s health in Upper Nile and Unity states, and explore factors that affected service provision during a protracted conflict.

Methods: The authors conducted a case study using a desk review of publicly available literature since 2013 and a secondary analysis of intervention coverage and conflict-related events from 2010 to 2017. During June through September 2018, they conducted 26 qualitative interviews with technical leads and 9 focus groups among health workers working in women and children’s health in Juba, Malakal, and Bentiu.

Results: Coverage for antenatal care, institutional delivery, and childhood vaccines were low prior to the escalation of conflict in 2013, and the limited data indicate that coverage remained low through 2017. Key factors that determined the delivery of services for women and children in the study sites were government leadership, coordination of development and humanitarian efforts, and human resource capacity. Participants felt that national and local health officials had a limited role in the delivery of services, and financial tracking data showed that funding stagnated or declined for humanitarian health and development programming during 2013–2014. Although health services were concentrated in camp settings, the availability of healthcare providers was negatively impacted by the protracted nature of the conflict and insecurity in the region.

Conclusions: Health care for women and children should be prioritized during acute and protracted periods of conflict by strengthening surveillance systems, coordinating short and long term activities among humanitarian and development organizations, and building the capacity of national and local government officials to ensure sustainability

Since the Second Sudanese Civil War in 1983, South Sudan has seen significant levels of displacement driven by conflict, resource stress, climate shocks, and disease. Movement, already an endemic feature of life in South Sudan, has enabled many South Sudanese households or household members to escape or mitigate years of shocks, but those deciding to move have often faced competing needs, physical risks, and constraints on movement. In order to better understand how both displacement routes and displacing households’ decision-making regarding movement has evolved over the past 35 years, REACH conducted research, consisting of secondary data review and quantitative and qualitative analysis, on long-term population movements trends in South Sudan between 1983-2019, to help humanitarians improve their ability to plan for early response in areas likely to receive displacement.

In this selection of articles on the Future and Implementation of the R-ARCSS in South Sudan scholars/experts including Christopher Zambakari, Remember Miamingi, Peter Adwok Nyaba and Jok Madut Jok explore the R-ARCSS and its implementation by focusing on different issues such as the delays in the implementation of the agreement, the security sector reform, and the number of states.