Conflict

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.

Speech of the Chairman and Commander in Chief Dr John Garang de Mabior, to the First SPLM/SPLA National Convention 2nd April 1994.

War, Migration and Work outlines how the changing economy has affected social relations in the Northern Bahr el-Ghazal borderlands, particularly between the old and the young, and men and women. The result is a fraying social system, where intra-family disputes, including violence, are on the rise, and the old order is being increasingly challenged and eroded. This report is also a discrete case study on how transnational mobility across borders, encouraged by the growth of paid work and cash-based market economies, is part of changing generational and gendered relationships.

Before independence in South Sudan, the Northern Bahr el-Ghazal borderlands had long been an economic frontier between northern and southern Sudan. The Second Sudanese Civil War—partly a continuation of the exploitation of this frontier—reshaped social relations and livelihoods rendering them more dependent on cash-based markets.
After the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and subsequent independence of South Sudan, those people the war had displaced northwards to Darfur and further afield to Khartoum, moved back to rebuild their lives. Post-war Northern Bahr el-Ghazal was not the same as before, however, with livelihoods more precarious and market dependent.
In spite of the changes war and displacement had wrought, male elders still expected to control the labour of young men to rebuild cattle herds lost in conflict. Continued military recruitment for the new wars in South Sudan took men away from home, leaving women without support, who were then forced to find ways to generate income for their families.
This precarious post-war cash-based market economy and the rise of paid work created alternatives to traditional male and female roles. The social perception of work—previously seen as a form of servitude—also changed, with paid work becoming more prestigious. As a result, young men were less willing to work for their male elders and
women realized the necessity of income generation made them less dependent on their husbands.
Though paid work offered partial escape from previous generational and gendered obligations, the new international frontier with Sudan became the last barrier of the old order for young men and women to overcome. Male officials controlling the border felt it their duty to prevent the South Sudanese labour force—seen as a collective national asset—leaving for better paid work in Sudan.
Market dependence in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal and the mobility of labour, including across the international boundary, has a distinct generational and gendered dimension. This is clearly articulated in the local discourse of the young and old, and men and women. It also demonstrates how the impact of war and displacement, in particular the transformation of livelihoods, has sharpened the developing recognition of economic and social rights.

Trade and markets in weak states are often discussed in relation with violence, security and peace-building. A case in point are marketplaces in the Sudan-South Sudan borderlands where communities separated by insecurity and hostility meet, not only to trade but also to negotiate and exchange information. This does not imply that establishment of such markets automatically results in peace and stability. Based on new empirical research on the Amieth market in Abyei – an area contested by the two Sudans – I argue that such markets rely on security guarantees negotiated between a set of heterogenous societal groups and that the overall impact of such border markets is largely determined within a context of hybrid security governance. The conclusion emphasises that without a proper analysis of this context, external assistance to such borderland markets might just as well enable violent conflict actors as being a tool for peace-building.

This report focuses on the IGAD-led mediation process from December 2013 to August 2015 to address the conflict in South Sudan. As per a project initiated, led and owned by IGAD, it identifies lessons from the South Sudan peace talks with the aim to inform future IGAD mediation efforts.

These lessons are based on interviews conducted by a team of researchers with mediators, advisers, parties and supporters as well as an analysis of internal IGAD documents concerning the South Sudan peace talks.The report highlights the commitment of IGAD to peacemaking in South Sudan, stepping in within days of the outbreak of violence on 15 December 2013 in Juba, convening an extraordinary Summit and mandating a mediation process led by highly experienced envoys.

IGAD’s resolute action helped to prevent further escalation of violence, kept the parties focused on negotiating a political settlement and produced a comprehensive peace agreement signed in August 2015. However, the August 2015 agreement failed to bring peace to South Sudan. This is because the parties lacked genuine willingness to make peace. This condition indeed characterized the South Sudan peace talks throughout. The report cautions IGAD mediators not to rush the process of negotiations. In the interests of sustainable peace, there may be no alternative to strategic patience until the parties reach a sufficient degree of consensus and reconciliation.When the talks reached a standstill in early 2015, IGAD mediators and partners applied leverage, pushing the parties to sign an agreement. This included increased diplomatic pressure, the imposition of targeted sanctions, the threat of an arms embargo and a directive mediation strategy presenting parties with an agreement on a take it or leave it basis. While this strategy produced an agreement, it undermined the parties’ ownership of the agreement, without which sustainable peace is not possible.

This report examines the ongoing conflict in the Equatoria region of South Sudan and delineates the key actors and interests that will need to be accommodated in any attempt to resolve the crisis. Based on field research and interviews conducted in Equatoria and neighboring Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kenya from 2016 to 2020, the report was sponsored by the Africa Center at the United States Institute of Peace.

As South Sudan’s conflicts, which began in December 2013, have fragmented and expanded, the hunger crisis has deepened and widened. Over 40 per cent of the population is severely food insecure, 60 per cent higher than at this time last year. On 20 February, the UN declared that some 100,000 people are already living in famine conditions in Leer and Mayendit counties. But some 5.5 million are at risk unless urgent measures are taken to reduce conflict and enable humanitarians to deliver more aid safely.
Conflict among various factions has prompted massive displacement that in turn has prevented farming, while looting and cattle rustling have destroyed many people’s assets. Some 1.9 million civilians are internally displaced persons (IDPs), 224,000 of whom have fled to UN peacekeeping bases. Another 1.6 million have found refuge in
neighbouring countries. Currency depreciation, hyperinflation and insecurity have led to declining trade and soaring food prices.
Addressing the humanitarian crisis is hugely expensive. In its 2017 appeal, the UN requested $1.6 billion; so far, only $439 million has been pledged. Helping starving people also is perilous; 82 humanitarian workers have been killed. In the absence of bolder policy decisions to reduce fighting, humanitarian actors will remain at the forefront of the myriad internal conflicts and, with their lives at risks and budgets under pressure, be able to do less as needs continue to grow.
To mitigate the worst effects of the conflicts, the peace process oversight body – the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC) – and its partners need to support ceasefire implementation, as well as local dialogue and negotiations between the government and warring factions. To prevent famine in the meantime, however, the humanitarian appeal needs to be fully funded. To ensure that the aid reaches those most in need, all actors should avoid politicising it. Finally, the two existing and third needed humanitarian corridors through Sudan must be kept consistently open.

This publication provides perspectives from leading analysts and scholars on the dilemmas groups raise for security provision, the South Sudanese state and peacebuilding nationally. It reviews three of the most significant actors – the arrow boys, gelweng and the White Armies – from the ground up, highlighting the need for local peace and security engagement to be based on a better understanding of their diverse roles and histories.

Cattle raiding, a longstanding practice among pastoralists in South Sudan, was historically governed by cultural authorities and ritual prohibitions. However, after decades of on-and-off integration into armed forces, raiders are now heavily armed, and military-style attacks claim dozens if not hundreds of lives at a time.