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Abstract South Sudan’s latest peace deal has been lauded as a milestone in the country’s long road to peace and stability. The Revitalised Agreement for the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) outlines power-sharing arrangements between rivals President Salva Kiir and main rebel/opposition leader Riek Machar, and provides a blueprint for a sustainable peace and democratic transition. Despite this welcome development, South Sudan’s revitalised peace process has been marred by delays, uncertainty, divisions and…

This policy brief rings alarm bells for the parties to the R-ARCSS, its guarantors,and civil society actors that unless certain actions are urgently taken, reforms under the revitalized peace agreement may fail to yield positive change in facilitating South Sudan’s transition to constitutional democracy, peace and national unity. What follows is a summary of main strands of the analysis and recommendations: •The R-ARCSS is a viable framework that could silence the guns and usher in…

Executive Summary South Sudan’s peace process remains in intensive care, its health dependent on continual attention from its external sponsors, namely neighboring governments and the international community. This is not sustainable. At worst, it provides opportunities for the military and political elite to continue to run the country in pursuit of their own interests. At best, it buys time to create a more substantial peace process that can enact more far-reaching change. This policy brief…

The Politics of Numbers: On Security Sector Reform in South Sudan, 2005-2020 is the first comprehensive study of what has happened to South Sudan’s military forces since the end of the Sudanese second civil war in 2005. Based on extensive fieldwork in the country, the report argues that all of the international community’s efforts to create a unified armed forces in South Sudan have paradoxically only escalated the process of fracturing that led to the current…

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. Download    

The 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS) calls for the integration of combatants from South Sudan’s three key warring parties into a new ‘unified’ army. The process, however, has led to new sources of insecurity. This Briefing Paper explores the ways in which the R-ARCSS risks producing a national military structure that is potentially both too large and too fractious to be a viable vehicle…

This report focuses on the IGAD-led mediation process from December 2013 to August 2015 to address the conflict in South Sudan. As per a project initiated, led and owned by IGAD, it identifies lessons from the South Sudan peace talks with the aim to inform future IGAD mediation efforts. These lessons are based on interviews conducted by a team of researchers with mediators, advisers, parties and supporters as well as an analysis of internal IGAD…

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…

This essay assesses UNMISS as a case study of Japan’s foreign policy which is being implemented in order to fulfill its strategic national interests. In order to trace these interests firstly, it analyzes UNMISS as Japan’s tool to attain the international power; secondly, as an economic strategy to secure its access to the oil and other critical natural resources in Africa; and thirdly as a political strategy to outweigh China’s strategic influence in the region….

South Sudan, which separated from Sudan in 2011 after nearly 40 years of civil war, was embroiled in a new devastating conflict at the end of 2013. This happened when political disputes coupled with preexisting ethnic and political fault lines became brutal. This conflict has mostly targeted civilians and most often, ethnic groups, and warring parties have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The conflict has resulted in a major humanitarian crisis,…

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