Peacebuilding

This case study sets out learning from programmatic engagement from the UK’s Peacebuilding Opportunities Fund (POF) among the Otuho people of Eastern Equatoria State. The programme promoted a cultural engagement process aimed to strengthen women’s peace and security at a time when Otuho society undergoes a 22-year cycle of generational change when leadership structures are renewed. This case study draws on POF experience from this engagement, sharing learning associated with influencing cultural processes through public discourse, and the development of bylaws adopted by the community. The learning paper outlines an approach to working with communities from within, while also reviewing social norms and practices which negatively impact women’s participative and leadership roles within society. The programme, working with local advisers, negotiated the consent of community leadership and facilitated public discussion on changes that would positively impact the community, to be adopted as bylaws.The case study shows the potential for change inherent in this community-led approach, outlining a change process that is internally driven, which builds on the positive dimensions of particular cultures, while affirming the need for change.

In this article the author examines the relevance of infant-industry promotion theory to South Sudan’s economic revitalization efforts. As a newly formed state with jurisdiction over people with varied and often conflicting interests, the South Sudanese government will likely experience difficulty developing institutions and procedures that produce an equitable distribution of economic gains across the South Sudanese population. After a brief introduction, Zambakari discusses the role of the state in economic development dating back to the renaissance. He discusses the state and economic development in South Sudan and argues that recent declines in South Sudan’s performance on key human development indicators heighten the urgency of evaluating different strategic options for rebuilding an economy ravaged by civil war. This process will necessarily require careful consideration of the optimal degree of state involvement in designing and implementing these solutions. Infant-industry promotion is one promising approach to leveling the playing field between developing and developed country economies. Lastly, Zambakari presents the case for infant-industry promotion and call for the government to serve an active role in economic development and promotion, an alternative model for development in South Sudan by applying selective economic policies to industries where productive capacities can be developed.

The youth of South Sudan cannot be defined under a single age bracket, and nor can they be defined by a single set of cultural characteristics or interests. Nevertheless, there appears to be a similar motivation emerging among South Sudan’s youth: a sense of tiredness and not having enough, as well as a desire to take matters into their own hands. This document draws on a broad base of secondary research conducted in recent years, but most importantly it surveys the voices of young people in seven states. More than 368 young people were consulted across Eastern, Central and Western Equatoria, Northern and Western Bahr el Ghazal, Unity and Lakes. Its goal is to gain a better understanding of these youth subcultures and to identify their needs, motivations and means for survival, as well as entry points to actively and peacefully involve them so that they may play a major role in peace and reconciliation, peacebuilding and community cohesion interventions.

South Sudan youth comprise 74 per cent of the population. The youth in South Sudan have been, for a long time, the logs that fuel the fire -positively as they drive the rural and urban informal economies, and negatively, as they are easily incentivized to violence and pervasive practices such as cattle raids.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) South Sudan commissioned this study to understand youth and their emerging subcultures in South Sudan. The study sought to understand what motivates the youth to join both negative and positive subcultures, what is driving the emerging youth subcultures in different states and how the positive subcultures can be reinforced for peace and development. The study also sought to understand how the youth can be disincentivized from the negative subcultures.

South Sudan’s peace process remains in intensive care, its health dependent on continual attention from its external sponsors, namely neighboring governments and the international community.
This is not sustainable. At worst, it provides opportunities for the military and political elite to continue to run the country in pursuit of their own interests. At best, it buys time to create a more substantial peace process that can enact more far-reaching change.
This policy brief takes stock of recent trends and developments in the peace process and offers a number of considerations to inform efforts by political actors in South Sudan and their international partners to consolidate peace.
The paper proposes the following three short-term steps to restore the implementation of the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS):
1. Sustained pressure from neighboring countries, coupled with increased investment in track II initiatives, could be used to overcome deadlock and increase communication among the various parties in the new unity government and between the new government and non-signatories to the R-ARCSS.
2. The creation of space for citizens to share their views on the way forward for the country could help to increase South Sudanese ownership over the peace process and create an environment that is conducive to more transformative change. Critically, any such civic engagement process should go beyond a simple airing of grievances and listing of the many things that should be done to helping people organize, set priorities, and determine what they can do at a local level to enact the changes that they want to see.
3. Policymakers and civic actors should make necessary preparations so that they are ready to respond decisively should the agreement collapse and large-scale violence resume.

Nyachangkuoth Rambang Tai, representing the organization Assistance Mission for Africa, was invited to provide a civil society perspective and recommendations when the Security Council met to discuss the situation in South Sudan. The NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security facilitated her statement but she did not speak on behalf of the NGOWG.