Peacebuilding

This rapid literature review collates lessons from major evaluations and learning reviews from development, state-building and stabilisation programming in South Sudan since independence in 2011. Key findings include: a) Donors in South Sudan have had to transition from humanitarian to development aid and back and forth a number of times as conflict has broken out. Donors need options to cope with a nonlinear state-building process as South Sudan’s political settlement has been, and will remain, very challenging; b) The sustainability of programmes in South Sudan has been limited as typically funding will not continue beyond the project, and as there is a high turnover of donor staff due to the difficult and dangerous living and working conditions. This is a major challenge for donors; c) Many donor programmes are identified as being “relevant” to the context and needs. However, South Sudan’s security situation holds back the achievements of many programmes. This rapid literature review found a lot of evaluations and reviews of programming in South Sudan, with many focussed on humanitarian programming (not covered in this query), and development programming, and few focussed on stabilisation. This review has endeavoured to only include evaluations of programmes that occurred after 2011, however, where it does include papers that analyse the period before and after 2011, it attempts to separate off only the lessons relevant to the post-2011 period (e.g. it only includes a little bit of information on the Multi-Donor Trust Fund for Southern Sudan (MDTF-SS) as this closed in 2012) (Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies, 2013). The literature is mostly produced by practitioners, policy-makers, and think tanks.

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.

For more than eighteen months, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the regional body mediating peace negotiations to end South Sudan’s civil war, has struggled to secure a deal in the face of deep regional divisions and the par- ties’ truculence. To overcome these challenges, it announced a revised, expanded mediation – “IGAD-PLUS” – including the African Union (AU), UN, China, U.S., UK, European Union (EU), Norway and the IGAD Partners Forum (IPF). The initiative is designed to present a united international front behind IGAD to the warring sides but so far it has failed to gain necessary backing from the wider international com- munity, much of which is disillusioned with both IGAD and the South Sudanese. Rather than distance itself from IGAD, the international community needs to support a realistic, regionally-centred strategy to end the war, underpinned by coordinated threats and inducements. Supporting IGAD-PLUS’ efforts to get the parties’ agree- ment on a final peace deal in the coming weeks is the best – if imperfect – chance to end the conflict and prevent further regionalisation.

South Sudan’s war has brought underlying regional tensions to the fore. It is part of yet another chapter of the historic enmity between Uganda and Sudan, while rivalry between Uganda and Ethiopia over their respective influence on regional security has coloured the mediation process. Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan have dedicated envoys mediating the process while Uganda is only involved at the IGAD heads of state (HoS) level. Kampala’s military deployment in support of Juba creates facts on the ground and precluded it sending an envoy to the talks, while Addis Ababa seeks to control the mediation and eventual balance of power in the region. One of IGAD’s achievements has been to manage these tensions, thus contain the conflict, but rivalries prevented the HoS from agreeing on final aspects of power-sharing and security arrangements, enabling the warring parties to continue without agreeing.

Three major factors limited IGAD’s mediation and remain a challenge: 1) regional rivalries and power struggles; 2) centralisation of decision-making at the HoS level and related lack of institutionalisation within IGAD; and 3) challenges in expanding the peace process beyond South Sudan’s political elites. Following the oft-violated January 2014 Cessation of Hostilities agreement, the HoS mediation strategy focused on deploying a regional force to create conditions for peace negotiations. When the wider international community stymied the prospective regional force and the situa- tion stabilised by June 2014, leaders could not overcome their divisions to agree on an effective alternate strategy. This undermined the IGAD special envoys, and the war- ring parties opted instead to engage directly with individual HoS in a series of initia- tives in Kampala, Khartoum and Nairobi. IGAD itself had little leverage. For example, despite public threats, the warring parties understood some member states were reluc- tant to support sanctions, repeatedly called IGAD’s bluff and refused to compromise.

IGAD is important as a forum to regulate the regional balance of power, but it needs high-level support if the region is to reach a unified position on peace. IGAD-PLUS should become a unifying vehicle to engage the ever-shifting internal dynamics in South Sudan more effectively and address the divisions among IGAD members that enable the parties to prolong the war. In particular, the AU high representative might lead shuttle diplomacy within the region to gain consensus on the way forward. A ded-

South Sudan: Keeping Faith with the IGAD Peace Process

Crisis Group Africa Report N°228, 27 July 2015 Page ii

icated UN envoy for South Sudan and Sudan should represent the UN in IGAD-PLUS and coordinate the various UN components’ support to the process.

IGAD-PLUS is the proposed bridge between an “African solution” approach and concerted high-level, wider international engagement. If it is to overcome the chal- lenges that bedevilled IGAD, its efforts must be based upon regional agreement and directly engage the South Sudanese leaders with greatest influence through both pres- sure and inducements. To end this war, a process is needed that seeks common ground, firmly pushes the parties to reasonable compromises, builds on rather than is under- mined by the Tanzanian and South African-led reunification process within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM, the dominant political force in South Sudan), and whose outcome is guaranteed by IGAD, the AU, the U.S and China. The coming weeks will require concerted international action, coordinated with IGAD, to take the final, necessary steps to secure an agreement. Failure to do so will lead to further violence and fracturing in South Sudan and leave the region without an effective mecha- nism to mediate its own internal divisions, with devastating consequences for the people of South Sudan and the region.

As a powerful tool in shaping public opinion, the mainstream press has been a leading agent in influencing general attitudes towards refugees. Besides garnering sympathy for asylum seekers, news coverage also has the power, through misrepresentation and propaganda, to stimulate hostility towards refugees. In light of this, refugees’ ability to establish a new identity and integrate in a host society partly hinges on their portrayal in the media. The latest wave of refugees has generated debates and press reportage from different approaches. At the same time as sexual attacks allegedly committed by refugees made the headlines in news portals, other journalists were bringing us human stories from refugee camps. Thus, the media has a pivotal role on refugee crisis especially on how they portray the refugees. Refugee voices in the press receive less exposure than political sources and citizen voices. In addition, negative portrayal of refugees in the mainstream press exacerbates stigma and hostility, and sensational reports often present asylum seekers as economic opportunists, potential criminals and a threat to national security. On the other hand, the response of the international community to the impact of large refugee populations on host countries is characterized by different conceptual underpinnings and motivations. Within the conceptual framework which UNHCR sought to organize a response there was has been a facet of broader thinking on the relationship of refugee aid and development assistance, and their relationship, in turn, to durable solutions to refugee situations. Thus, the paper addresses the contributions and the influence of the media in covering the global refugee crisis and how the international community responds to it. The paper uses a case of the refugee crisis in both Syria and South Sudan.

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.

The R-ARCSS was designed as an all-encompassing package of measures that would help end the civil war in South Sudan. Yet, in reality it does not efficiently address some of the root causes of the conflict. More than addressing those in a manner that connects both bottom-up and top-down drivers of tension, it focuses on elements of a power-sharing agreement and paves the way for resource sharing arrangements.

This brief examines how and why grievances emerge and how these can be instrumentalized by national and local-level actors to secure access to territory and resources, with significant effect on the political stability and security at the local level. It takes the debate around the number of states as an example of how administrative decisions on sub-state boundaries and the administrative power that derive from those decisions can re-enforced competition over governance and territory. This is best illustrated by increased politization of disputes between the Padang Dink and the Shilluk living on the east bank of the White Nile. The brief ends with a number of takeaways for international actors working to support the peace process in South Sudan.

In the Horn of Africa, there is a fundamental mismatch between the nation state framework through which bilateral and multilateral actors see the world, and the networked lives of often vulnerable populations in the region. This is most obvious at the margins of these states, where identities are fluid and decades of displacement and mobility have created extensive global networks beyond the control of state actors. Though movement and mobility, and to an extent the pathways used, are not new, the ability of the transnational
to become integrated with everyday life in disparate locations is.
The transformative impact of everyday transnational linkages is particularly acute in politically and economically marginalized borderlands. These areas are historically subject to more extractive forms of government. Given their insecure locations, such areas traditionally have attracted predominantly emergency assistance. In particular, these borderland spaces have become central to refugee operations in the Horn of Africa, with national
governments content for international resources to substitute for their own more proactive engagement.
An unintended consequence of this approach, however, has been to unmoor these territories further from the national sphere. Refugee programming has helped to internationalize them by creating incentives for transnationalism, whether to attend better schools over borders or by creating new migration routes to western countries that offer resettlement. This has created complex transnational resource flows through family and
extended kinship networks, transforming remote border posts into nodes for flows of
people, cash and social capital.
In these contexts, what are often perceived by outsiders as traditional and highly localized orders are actually interacting with the contemporary global economy and multiple cultural influences. The result can be a subversion of the usually unequal relationships between centre and periphery that not only challenges the spatial organization of state power but also the internal ordering of local societies.
If international actors are unaware of these dynamics, they are failing to understand a critical
component of how individuals, families and communities are organizing themselves
and surviving. Whether focused on fostering community resilience, tackling local conflicts
or encouraging economic activity, there is a need to understand better the daily influence of transnational dynamics. There is also a risk of significant negative effects on local populations from interventions designed to reassert the control of the centre or harden state boundaries.
This suggests a need for further research into the role of the aid industry in transnational political economies, and the opportunities and pitfalls of donor engagement in borderlands. Such research requires new or adapted analytical frameworks that can both investigate and describe complex networked systems. This entails, for example, asking questions about how changes in one location can impact on populations thousands of
kilometres away. Such frameworks also need to foreground individual agency in order to move beyond the limited standard accounts of mobility that focus on push and pull factors.

After nearly 4 years, the ND finally concluded on November 17, 2020, offering broadly appreciated recommendations on a range of state formation and national building matters in South Sudan. This Review, therefore, analyzes the ND by revisiting its merits and public reaction, assessing its achievements, and situating its recommendations in the policy parameters and cultural perspectives of South Sudan.

The current state of affairs in the country has been long in the making. Since April 2020, following a stalled formation of the Revitalized Government of National Unity (RTGoNU), there has been growing frustration in the country. Citizens had hoped that the political developments in February and March had created sufficient momentum to push the parties toward full implementation of what was clearly a grounded Peace Agreement. One of the key decisions that created this thrust was the President’s decision to return the country to 10 states. The issue of the number of states and their boundaries was considered a major hurdle toward the implementation of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS).

Addressing the legacies of mass human rights violations is a daunting task for any society emerging from conflict. The challenges are all the more complex in South Sudan, where people have struggled with civil wars, state repression, and developmental neglect for generations. With the current conflict, transitional justice – or the range of judicial and nonjudicial measures that countries emerging from a period of conflict or authoritarian rule use to address past human right violations – has come onto the agenda for the first time. However, the foundational elements that are required for transitional justice interventions to succeed are lacking. Political leaders are largely uninformed about the role that transitional justice can play in restoring peace, and some are deeply uncomfortable with the notion of scrutinizing and holding people accountable for wartime abuses. Survivors are conspicuously absent from discussions about how best to address the legacies of the conflict, and human rights advocates are confronted with an ever-shrinking civic space. Moreover, there are real fears that the tense peace that currently exists among most armed groups could collapse at any moment and the country could return to full-scale civil war.

The uncertainties of the current situation make it all the more important for South Sudanese to develop a carefully considered plan for transitional justice that identifies priorities and sequences activities in a manner that sustains and builds momentum over time. Most importantly, transitional justice interventions must be tailored to the context and designed and implemented in a manner that is meaningful to South Sudanese. Transitional justice in South Sudan will be a generational undertaking. While the current generation may not realize the full rewards of their efforts, it is nonetheless incumbent upon us to begin the process and establish a strong foundation that subsequent generations might build upon.