This paper documents experiences from the Bridge Network, a group of South Sudanese researchers, on how they conduct research in conflict setting. It outlines some of the challenges South Sudanese researchers face, including managing people’s expectations as well as convincing respondents to permit recording of interviews, and how they address these challenges. One researcher noted ‘that flexibility allowed him to manoeuvre the security context and conduct many interviews whilst maintaining high ethical standards’. Download
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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.
This Context Update Factsheet 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 might interact with this context. The Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility’s analysis covers the period January-March 2021 and is based on quantitative data reported by key informants at the settlement-level collected by REACH and additional qualitative sources. All findings presented in…
This article discusses the concepts of failure of states, fragility of states, and the prospects of peace in South Sudan. The article focuses specifically on judicial structural deformities in South Sudan under the qualitative and normative research methodologies, with structural functionalism as theoretical framework. Where preceding works had concentrated their South Sudanese peace-building recommendations on power-sharing mechanisms, this contribution emphasizes a long-term postviolence focus on the building of governance structures. The work recommends that while…
The South Sudan peace agreement provides for transitional justice mechanisms aimed at fostering justice and reconciliation. They include the Commission for Truth, Reconciliation and Healing (CTRH) and the Hybrid Court for South Sudan (HCSS). Drawing on qualitative data obtained from interviews, document reviews, and archival research conducted between October 2019 and June 2020 in Addis Ababa, Kampala, and Nairobi, this study delves into the current transitional justice discourses in South Sudan with a particular focus…
This report provides an overview of the National Dialogue in South Sudan with a focus on citizen perceptions of the process. It lays out the current context in which the National Dialogue is situated, the history of past dialogues as well as the initiation and evolution of the current process. The report concludes with a series of recommendations for how to support the implementation of the National Dialogue’s resolutions and lessons learned for other participatory…
International humanitarian actors and academics continue to struggle to understand armed group conduct and how to restrain this conduct when it violates moral, legal and humanitarian norms. Armed groups that lack a visible, explicit formal hierarchical command structure, equivalent to those found in state militaries, have proved a particular puzzle. A growing body of scholarship on the strategic functions of patterns of violence and restraint has usefully moved beyond assumptions that extreme violence is indicative…
South Sudan is highly vulnerable to climate change, including flooding, droughts and, most recently, a locust infestation. Long-term climate change, like a gradual increase in temperature, and short-term changes, like increased flooding, have indirect and interlinked implications for peace and security in South Sudan. Download
This Conflict Sensitivity Analysis (CSA) was requested by the Inter-Cluster Coordination Group in October 2020 and examines the conflict sensitivity implications of the transition of UN Protection of Civilian sites in Bentiu, Unity State, and Malakal, Upper Nile State, from sites under the protection of United Nations Mission in South Sudan to camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) under the jurisdiction of the Government of the Republic of South Sudan.
A literary essay that tells the story of southern Sudan since 1983, and the emergence of a dominant military class in the country, sustained by international support and the indifference of the diplomatic corps. Link to publication
In this chapter John Young explores the political history of the state in South Sudan. This chapter is part of the book “The Nation State: A Wrong Model for the Horn of Africa” by John Young, John Markakis and Günther Schlee published in March 2021. Download
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