South Sudan’s complex and evolving context requires aid actors to navigate interconnected challenges, from political instability to climate shocks, in ways that avoid harm and foster resilience. The CSRF focuses its work on ‘priority themes’ that are updated every 1-2 years based on changes in the context, partner priorities and the facility’s own learning. These reflect clusters of issues where there are significant risks of contributing to conflict, opportunities to contribute to peace, or dilemmas facing the aid sector. The current priority themes include:
How will the aid sector adapt during a fragile time of political transition for South Sudan? How do aid actors work within critical issues such as elections, census, constitution-making and security sector reform, alongside returns and resettlement and the associated risks of increased sub-national violence and a surge in gender-based violence – will all these present dilemmas for both humanitarian response, development planning and peacebuilding?
The CSRF wants to create spaces to convene and advise aid actors on how to apply conflict-sensitive ways to design aid – in ways that support an inclusive and peaceful transition, rather than perpetuating the current ‘political unsettlement’ or triggering competition to capture and direct the benefits of aid ahead of elections.
How can aid achieve more integrated and collective responses, building on lessons and good practice relating to resilience and humanitarian, development, peacebuilding (HDP) coherence?
The CSRF wants to build on its growing role as a trusted, impartial broker to encourage greater collaboration and coordination among humanitarian, development and peacebuilding actors.
The CSRF will facilitate learning from past and present initiatives through information-sharing, accompaniment and facilitating problem-solving discussions. The CSRF will contribute to a deeper understanding of what the ‘peace pillar’ of HDP coherence should look like in practice and avoid a ‘conflict-blind’ approach that compromises the perceived neutrality of the aid response at a critical moment.
How can the aid sector more effectively put South Sudanese at the centre of sustainable approaches to aid? While progress has been made towards meeting The Grand Bargain’s financing objectives in South Sudan, progress towards wider ‘localisation’ or locally-led responses have slowed, and decisions regarding aid continue to be made without meaningful input from South Sudanese communities, particularly women, youth and other marginalised groups.
In this theme, the CSRF wants to build on its previous analyses and national NGO (NNGO) mentorship programme new ways of encouraging and institutionalising more active participation of South Sudanese, including women-led organisations, in decision-making processes. This will provide a counterbalance to top-down approaches, and it will support the wider aid sector to tailor efforts to support peace and development based on South Sudanese people’s perspectives and priorities.
How can aid adapt its response to the increasing pressures of the climate crisis and environmental management? In recent years, we have seen record levels of sustained flooding in South Sudan. These have been reflected in long-term displacement of entire communities and controversial debates about appropriate policy responses, such as dredging and resettlement. Each of these responses will have long-term consequences for livelihoods, settlement patterns and governance, which will shape local and potentially national conflict dynamics.
The CSRF wants to increase its advisory services and capacity support to the aid community to navigate these risks and to ensure aid supports locally led climate responses, which also recognise and use indigenous knowledge. The relevance of this theme stretches into development models and how they interact with conservation, land and natural resource (including oil) management.
