Conflict

The New Deal implementation in South Sudan. "A South Sudanese civil society perspective paper"

As a pilot country for the New Deal implementation, South Sudan was described as a burgeoning
young nation steadily emerging from the crisis phase on the fragility spectrum into the reform
and rebuild phase. A critical analysis however of the events two years post-independence would
have revealed the true nature of the state of the nation. By late 2012, South Sudan had
conducted its first Fragility Assessment as a country volunteer in the pilot for the New Deal,
over a period of seven months, the Government of south Sudan and development partners
began the process of developing a New Deal Compact by engaging in sub national consultations
across the country. The purpose of the compact was to create a framework of improved
partnership and mutual accountability between the Government of South Sudan and her
development partners with the aim of fulfilling South Sudan’s development vision. In December
2013, the signing of the New Deal compact came to a halt due to the shortcomings associated
with the IMF staff monitored program. Shortly after, the country lapsed into a conflict
precipitated by a political crisis within the government and the ruling party of SPLM.
This perspective paper analyses the relevance of the New Deal under the current circumstances
created by the conflict in South Sudan and assesses the shortfalls of New Deal as a framework
for aid effectiveness through literature review and perspectives harvested from a cross section
of government, civil society and development partners.
The findings of this perspective paper by no means reflect a thorough interpretation of the full
effects of the conflict in South Sudan or the complex dynamics that characterises South Sudan as
a newly independent nation affected by numerous challenges.
It identifies areas for follow up actions and recommendations for establishing concrete building
blocks necessary for the launching of the New Deal process in South Sudan situation allowing.

This article discusses the relationship between education and armed conflict in Sudan and South Sudan, and particularly the role of teachers in peace and reconciliation efforts. The periods covered are the North-South civil war from 1955 to 2005, the interim period between 2005 and 2011 with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the current civil war in South Sudan which started two years after South Sudan’s independence in 2013.

The article shows that teachers are not always promoters of peace and reconciliation, and that their teaching in class to a large extent is context-dependent. The teachers in the Islamic schools during the first civil war had few options but to teach according to the Islamic curriculum and thus cemented the self-Other dichotomy between the Northerners and the Southerners in the conflict-ridden country. Moreover, the article shows that the teachers in the liberation areas in the South during the first civil war chose deliberately a confrontation strategy against their oppressors from the North that coincided with the resistance war.

In the civil war inside South Sudan from 2013 a different teaching pattern emerged where the teachers discussed openly the atrocities of the North during the first civil war, but applied an avoidance strategy in class when teaching about the civil war inside the South. It was perceived to be less of a dilemma to teach contemporary history without touching upon domestic conflict and ethnic rivalry than to teach about conflicts in the South which seriously undermined any idea of social cohesion. Undoubtedly, the teachers felt strongly that it was necessary to treat history teaching carefully, and that there is a fine line between what should and should not be told. There was a perception among teachers that debating the domestic civil war might cause unrest and conflict in class whereas any discussion of the South-North war would not since very few, if any of the students had any allegiance to the North and the Islamic discourse. The article thus raises the question of the relationship between the teachers’ solutions to these dilemmas and education’s role in conflict situations.

Civil society has a vital role in advocating for inclusive, people-centred security provision which meets the everyday safety and security needs of all. This is especially crucial in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, characterized by high levels of insecurity. Restricted civic space shackles civil society’s ability to engage and influence. Despite this, civil society in Burundi, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Niger, Somalia/Somaliland, and South Sudan has developed strategies to navigate, maintain and open civic space to advocate for inclusive, people-centred security and peace. This paper argues that regional and international stakeholders can support civil society to enhance the power of people’s voices in the security sector

This article analyzes the increasingly prominent role of regional organizations (ROs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in promoting norms in mediation processes. In particular, we seek to understand the processes by which RO and NGO mediators promote the inclusivity norm to negotiating parties and the outcomes that result. We employ the concepts of local agency and social practices in examining the normative agency of ROs and NGOs in promoting and redefining the inclusivity norm. Through illustrative case studies of peace processes in South Sudan and Myanmar, we argue that ROs’ and NGOs’ mediation practices reflect their
claims to alternative resources of power, such as long-standing expertise and insider status in the context, and build congruence with strong local norms. We provide nuanced theoretical insights on RO and NGO mediators’ claims to agency and provide empirical illustrations on how these claims contribute to constitutive changes to norms.

The Politics of Numbers: On Security Sector Reform in South Sudan, 2005-2020 is the first comprehensive study of what has happened to South Sudan’s military forces since the end of the Sudanese second civil war in 2005. Based on extensive fieldwork in the country, the report argues that all of the international community’s efforts to create a unified armed forces in South Sudan have paradoxically only escalated the process of fracturing that led to the current civil war.

Through a rigorous analysis of the current military situation in South Sudan, the report shows that the current peace process has not brought about peace, but the intensification of a war economy based on predation and increasingly ethnicized military forces. Peace, this report argues, is not the opposite of war, but merely one of its modes.

This paper examines key policy and programmatic considerations for international health and employment
interventions responding to COVID-19 in conflict-affected countries. It outlines a range of important
peacebuilding considerations and highlights significant contributions the World Health Organization (WHO)
and the International Labour Organization (ILO) are making to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic.
By doing so, this paper aims to shed light on the risks and resilience factors that are particularly relevant in
countries recently or currently affected by armed conflict, or where the risk of an outbreak, escalation of, or
relapse into violence is high (for the sake of readability, these situations are hereafter referred to as “conflictaffected”). It suggests how these considerations can best be incorporated into COVID-19 policy responses
and programming, and provides general and practical guidance for how programmes and interventions may
need to be adapted to become optimally effective, do no harm and strengthen prospects for peace. Thus, one
of the main added values of this paper is the link of peace to health.
The paper stems from a partnership among WHO, ILO, Interpeace and the UN Peacebuilding Support
Office (PBSO) of the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.1
This publication targets national
governments/donors, international agencies and civil society engaged in the COVID-19 response specifically
in the areas of health, decent work and employment, and peacebuilding in conflict-affected settings.

Investment in overseas developmental projects is a multifaceted effort which involves a variety of actors. These include donor governments and their departments for international aid, international organisations, recipient governments and the societies in the recipient countries. With relation to the latter, the existence of an active civil society has been identified as crucial for the advancement of socio-political reforms (Putnam 1995; Kaldor 2003; Neumayer 2005). Certainly, aid providers have become more aware of the need to take civil society into account when supporting initiatives aiming to promote democratisation, human rights, and human security in general. The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), two of the largest government-supported aid agencies, have invested resources in exploring the importance of civil society in recipient countries and the avenues for encouraging its further development (DFID 2012; Giffen and Judge 2010; USAID 2014).

More recent works on civil society have recognised, though, the fact that such actors are not confined to particular territorial boundaries. Civil society campaigns are often global, involving elements that operate at the international and transnational levels. One element, nevertheless, has been overall neglected by both policymakers and scholars examining transnational civil society, and that is diaspora communities. The refugees of previous decades, which have evolved into well-established communities in the West, have traditionally played pivotal roles in the reconstruction of their homelands. But as time has gone by, they have become involved in other aspects of state- and society-building in the homeland. As the paper concludes, while there is undoubtedly eagerness among highly motivated and talented diasporans to contribute to social and political changes in the homeland, on the ground, there are difficulties and challenges. These challenges may limit the contribution and hinder diasporan integration in, and contribution to, activism in the homeland. Aid providers and donors should develop clear strategies to incorporate diaspora communities in development programmes. Such integration would help not only to utilise the advantages that diaspora returnees possess when participating in civil society campaigns in the homeland, but could also help these returnees to overcome potential challenges that they face.

There are numerous issues that continue to undermine the full realisation of HLP rights for the people of South Sudan and HLP is recognized as a growing key protection concern across the country. The HLP Technical Working Group (HLP TWG) strives to ensure the integration of HLP rights and concerns in humanitarian responses, and to ensure that key affected populations are supported. This note summarizes the key HLP challenges in South Sudan and provides recommendations for various stakeholders to better inform advocacy and programming.

The project examines how experiences of conflict, regional displacement and mobility, and the shift to an increasingly market-oriented and import-dependent economy have changed what people in South Sudan grow and eat. The research focuses on the country’s borderland spaces, or locations where South Sudan’s interaction with the regionalized market in grains and other foods is most evident, like food markets in Juba. Furthermore, the research looks at experiences with border-crossing and regional displacement and how these can be studied through changing food systems.

This report examines the scale of child, early and forced marriage (CEFM) in fragile and conflict-affected states. Studies focusing on the displaced Syrian population, the conflict-affected population in Yemen, and displaced groups in several Sub-Saharan African countries highlight recent increases in child marriage in FCAS. While evidence shows that globally, girls from poor and/or rural backgrounds are more likely to be married than girls from richer and/or urban backgrounds, this is not a linear pattern and it varies across countries. There are some consistent drivers of CEFM across countries, whether they are stable or fragile. These include gender inequality and unequal gender norms, poverty, barriers to education, unpaid family caring responsibilities, weak law enforcement, concerns around girls’ safety, and fears around controlling girls’ sexuality or ‘honour’. In fragile and conflict-affected states, some additional, interconnected drivers are at work. These include: displacement, being out of school, threat or experience of violence, conflict or crisis fuelled poverty and food insecurity, conflict or crisis fuelled weakening of the rule of law and conflict or crisis fuelled strengthening of harmful social norms.