Peacebuilding

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.

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.

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.

Over the last 50 years, the various conflicts afflicting South Sudan have caused massive displacements of people. Latest estimates suggest there are more than 1.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs) within the country’s borders, with another 2.2 million refugees displaced outside the country, as a result of the most recent conflicts. Policymakers generally see these populations as highly vulnerable—being less able to provide for themselves and their families away from their original homes—and at risk of involvement in cross-border conflict dynamics. Thus, responses by state actors to these movements tend to focus on managing potential conflict, providing humanitarian assistance for displaced communities, and supporting, facilitating or (in some cases) forcing populations to return to their home areas.

This report aims to better inform those working on humanitarian assistance, particularly to populations on the move, peace and development in South Sudan and the region, particularly international actors less familiar with these dynamics. Billions of dollars are spent on humanitarian and peacekeeping programmes globally every year, yet, despite being critical to the lives of millions of ordinary people, transnational networks are missing from most analyses. The report’s concluding section includes a set of recommendations intended to help international policymakers formulate an informed response to these transnational dynamics.