Peacebuilding

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.

In the context of South Sudan, as may be the case with other conflict and fragile communities, the nexus – in terms of causal relationship – between conflict and livelihoods is outstanding. The common denominator of the current conflict in South Sudan is loss of livelihood resulting from prolonged poverty and lack of alternatives to meet basic human needs. It is hypothesised that enhanced local conflict management skills, combined with resilience from improved livelihoods – all of which are seen to be fundamental to building trust both between and among local communities – will create a pathway through which the root causes of what has proven to be repeated cycles of both conflict and economic shocks in South Sudan can be addressed. Thus this programme is constructed upon a “theory of change” that emphasises the building of resource resilience and strengthening inter-communal conflict management mechanisms as a means of leading to three interrelated long-term outcomes: resilient livelihoods and food security; social cohesion; and peaceful conflict resolution. This policy brief is the second in a series of five briefs (to be published by the end of the programme) that seek to disseminate lessons learned from the project as well as to share the challenges faced by local communities in their respective peace building initiatives.

1SComment
outh Sudan broke apart and plunged into a violent confrontation in December 2013 following bitter disagreements within the top leadership of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), splintering the party into several groupings. The conflict shockingly started merely 2 years after the country seceded from the Sudan, in 2011. The violence has claimed thousands of lives and displaced millions others, both locally and to the international borders. The tragedy has not only caught many by surprise given the long history of struggle for statehood in the region, but has also confirmed well expressed reservations especially from the northern Sudanese about South Sudanese ability to self-govern. Since its commencement a little over a year ago, an army of mediators and envoys has been mobilized not only to understand both the proximal and distal drivers of, but also exert efforts to arrest the substantially devastating violence as quickly as possible. The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional political and economic development block for Eastern Africa, has been in the forefront in these sorts of endeavors. These have been frustratingly slow, nevertheless, with the parties to the conflict showing limited signs of seriousness about ending the violence peacefully. Several other significant processes meant for nudging the belligerent parties toward peace have recently propped up, such as international sanctions, arms embargoes, and intraparty dialogues. A plethora of these initiatives have culminated in a range of agreements, most of them subsequently dishonored by the parties.

​This article assesses when diversity becomes a curse in Africa. The review of literature on the causation of civil wars shows gaps, weaknesses and lack of holistic framework of analysis. It is argued in this article that the risk of violent conflict is better explained in Africa by absence of social contract as a manifestation of governance deficit rather than the presence of grievances and greed. Recognizing these gaps, this article uses the heuristic social contract framework to assess the drivers of diversity-related conflicts in Africa. Applying this social contract framework to analyze the case of the two Sudans that have been susceptible to recurrent diversity-related conflict, it is argued in this article that ethnic diversity is not a curse and it becomes a curse when there is governance deficit that is manifested in social contract and system of government that abhor and detest diversity. Transforming diversity to become a virtue requires forging a system of government and a resilient social contract that addresses the core conflict issues as well as building inclusive and accountable institutions that promote social cohesion and democratic governance.