As the practice of the protection of civilians (POC) has evolved in peacekeeping missions, the UN has increasingly focused on “people-centered” approaches. As a result, community engagement has emerged as a core component of POC efforts. By engaging with communities, missions can build trust, gather information, and build a protective environment, ultimately improving their ability to protect civilians. This paper examines the positive implications and impact of this increased focus on community engagement, as well…
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CSRF Research Repository
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Introduction Communal violence has attracted both research and policy attention in recent years. Global developments, such as climate change and its aggravating effects on farmer-herder conflicts in Nigeria, election violence in India and Kenya, or attempts by UN peacekeepers to protect civilians from attacks by communal militias in Mali and South Sudan have brought such violence to our attention and illustrate the death and destruction such conflicts can cause and the need to better address…
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…
The core argument of this paper is that it is possible to engage in meaningful peacebuilding and reconciliation activities in South Sudan, despite the many complexities and tensions. However, serious re-thinking is required to develop and design more strategic and context-sensitive approaches. Consideration of the tensions raised here, and devising methodologies to manage them that accurately reflect the complexities of the context and of action within it, will help. All actors, whatever their role, position…
This report describes the main findings and recommendations of research carried out for the Partners for Resilience (PfR) alliance on how the PfR programme is affected by – or may affect – conflict. Although PfR works in different conflict-affected countries and contexts, it does not address conflict or insecurity explicitly. This is potentially problematic for PfR’s effectiveness. It is therefore important to consider whether PfR could or should address conflict more explicitly. For this research,…
This guidance framework is the output of discussions involving representatives from operational aid agencies and groups in South Sudan. The purpose of this guidance framework is: 1. To facilitate more nuanced understanding of organised violence in South Sudan and address potentially misleading use of catch-all terms (e.g. ‘inter-communal violence’ or ‘cattle raiding’) 2. To facilitate more constructive inter-agency dialogue and planning through a more consistent use of key terms used to describe organised violence in…
February 2020 saw the formation of the executive of the Revitalised Transitional Government of National Unity (RTGoNU). Since then fighting between the signatories to the Revitalised Agreement on Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (RARCSS) has been significantly reduced, as parties broadly respect the ceasefire. However, although the agreement largely brought an end to violence between signatories, South Sudan continues to experience significant levels of organised violence. The scope and intensity of this violence…
Breaking Out of the Borderlands is the second report by Dr Nicki Kindersley and Joseph Diing Majok on South Sudan’s changing borderland economy. The first report in the series—Monetized Livelihoods and militarized Labour in South Sudan’s Borderlands—described the protracted state of social and economic crisis that has gripped the borderland region of Northern Bahr el-Ghazal. Breaking Out of the Borderlands takes the phenomena described in the authors’ earlier work—the monetization of land, life and work…
Abstract Peacebuilding is less likely to succeed without the participation and consideration of women. In the last two decades, peace operations deployed on the African continent under the banner of the United Nations and the African Union have included mandates focused on strengthening women’s participation in peace processes, ensuring the protection of women and girls, and integrating gender considerations into the approach of missions at building sustainable peace. This chapter examines the approaches undertaken in…
Abstract Common to most protracted conflicts that relapse into war is a disconnect between elites and local communities, which typically suffer the most when the former undermine peace agreements to further their own narrow interests. The central argument in this chapter, drawing heavily on the recent history of Sudan/South Sudan and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), is that African conflict resolution and peacebuilding relies too heavily on political agreements between politico-military elites. These deals focus…
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