The African Union (AU) and Regional Economic Communities (REC) have become pivotal peacemakers in the two decades since they began the construction of a joint African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) with the objective to provide “African solutions to African problems.” The African organisations have developed normative policy frameworks and organisational structures for mediation and preventive diplomacy. The peacemaking institutions, which were developed with the assistance of international development partners, reflect the long-standing peacemaking experience,…
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CSRF Research Repository
The CSRF Research Repository aims to support greater contextual knowledge for policy makers, programme managers, and implementers by providing a searchable repository of research, analysis, and resources, and providing periodic updates on new research and analysis.
South Sudan continues to face recurring violent conflict, food insecurity, corruption, and poverty. Despite positive shifts within national legislation on gender equality, political, social, and economic power in South Sudanese society continues to reflect the deep patriarchy within society. The role of women and men, reflecting the gender norms of their respective cultural milieus, in both resolving and driving conflict is often not well understood by aid actors. Patterns of marginalisation, affecting both women and…
In our last blog post titled Leave No ‘R’ Behind: Understanding the Importance of Fostering Resilience I in the Context of Fragility, Conflict, and Violence, we discussed how experiences and understanding of resilience differ across different levels of society. Building on that discussion, the following discussion explores programmatic approaches that can be used by the World Bank and other development and aid partners to foster resilience. Several elements of program design and implementation can be…
Resilience is a dominant humanitarian-development theme. Nonetheless, some humanitarian-development programmes have demonstrably negative impacts which encourage vulnerable people to actively resist these programmes. Based on 12 months ethnographic fieldwork in a Ugandan refugee settlement during 2017–18, this paper argues refugee residents articulated their refusal of humanitarian failure and corruption through active, largely non-political, resistance. I term the diverse strategies used ‘resistant resilience’, arguing that the agency central to these practices require that assumptions about resilience are…
This article analyzes the role of UN sanctions in the context of peace negotiations in South Sudan from the outbreak of the civil war in December 2013 until the signing of the peace agreement in August 2015. Drawing on the literature regarding third-party intervention in civil wars, it explores whether the UN sanctions regime—established in March 2015—was conceived as an instrument of leverage to get the parties to agree to a settlement. The article asks…
This context update aims to support a conflict-sensitive approach to decision making by aid actors and policy makers in South Sudan through an improved understanding of South Sudan’s context, conflict dynamics and how aid actors interact with the context. The analysis by the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF) is based on secondary data from various sources and qualitative data from some key informant interviews. This analysis covers a 3-6 month period (October 2021-March 2022), and…
Despite the signing of the revitalized peace agreement in 2018, violence continues to impact communities across South Sudan. Almost 4 million South Sudanese are displaced, including 1.7 million internally displaced people and 2.3 million refugees abroad, with women and children disproportionately affected. In the face of these challenges, however, communities across the country continue to draw on both established and new strategies to face the impacts of fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV). These strategies offer…
Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) is endemic in South Sudan. Approaches to end VAWG are barely making a dent in prevalence figures. Global evidence tells us that ending VAWG in conflict-ridden contexts is challenging on many levels. Our research points to the need for social and gender norm change approaches to be better contextualised within the political economy and through applying a nuanced critique of the role of culture in normalising many forms of…
This report assess community perceptions of humanitarian assistance in South Sudan. It is based on Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), protection and conflict sensitivity data from the 2021 expanded Food Security and Nutrition Monitoring System (FSNMS+)assessment and seeks to inform an evidence-based approach to community-centred, accountable, and conflict sensitive response planning to support the operationalisation of the HCT’s AAP Strategy. Recommendations in this brief have been endorsed by the Communication and Community Engagement Working Group…
Social media is teeming with mixed reactions to Egypt’s plan to dredge the Bahr el Ghazal River to reduce the flood risks in South Sudan. In addition to the mixed public reactions, South Sudanese officials continue to contradict one another in the media, signifying lack of consensus on the project within the government. The Press Secretary in the Office of the President said the President was not aware of the project. The Minister of Environment…
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