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Humanitarian Needs Overview: South Sudan 2022
This document is consolidated by OCHA on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides a shared understanding of the crisis in South Sudan in early 2022, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of…
Research paper
Patchwork States: The Localization of State Territoriality on the South Sudan–Uganda Border, 1914–2014
This paper takes a localized conflict over a non-demarcated stretch of the Uganda–South Sudan boundary in 2014 as a starting point for examining the history of territorial state formation on either side of this border since its colonial creation in…
Research paper
The humanitarian protectorate of South Sudan? Understanding insecurity for humanitarians in a political economy of aid
This paper contributes to debates about humanitarian governance and insecurity in post-conflict situations. Taking the case of South Sudan, it explores relations between humanitarian agencies, the international community, and local authorities, and how international and local forms of power become…
Research paper
The effects of conflict and displacement on violence against adolescent girls in South Sudan: the case of adolescent girls in the Protection of Civilian sites in Juba
There is a paucity of data on violence against women and girls (VAWG) during conflict in general and even less specifically on violence against adolescent girls. Based on secondary analysis of a larger study in South Sudan, this article highlights…
Research paper
Rethinking access to land and violence in post-war cities: reflections from Juba, Southern Sudan
It is often assumed that violence diminishes after civil war. In fact, urban areas can turn highly violent. The new forms of violence that can emerge are widespread but poorly understood and have been attributed to a range of factors…
Research paper
A Perturbed Peace: Applying Complexity Theory to UN Peacekeeping
Drawing on experience working and conducting fieldwork in the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this article argues that UN peacekeeping operations should view themselves as actors within the complex conflict ecosystem, looking to enable transformational…
Research paper
Lakes as Rebellious Landscapes: From ‘Fishing Rebels’ to ‘Fishy State Officials’ in DR Congo
This article discusses the frictions that emerge when the management of Virunga National Park in eastern DR Congo tries to retake control of Lake Edward through infrastructural and military interventions. These interventions not only encounter resistance from multiple rebel groups…
Research paper
A Reason Not to Belong: Political Decentralization, Intercommunal Relations, and Changing Identities in Northeastern Uganda
Based on oral history fieldwork in Abim, Meyerson documents these changes in sociopolitical identification among the Ethur. In doing so, he demonstrates how political decentralization has become a venue for the combination of international discourses of indigenous rights, national notions…
Research paper
Peace Starts with Peace of Mind: Study of the Intersection between Postconflict Trauma, Peacebuilding and Economic Development in Northern Uganda
This study examines an intervention implemented by TPO Uganda in northern Uganda addressing mental health challenges, conflict mediation and economic empowerment. The research consisted of 23 individual in-depth interviews and 16 focus group discussions, supported by a quantitative questionnaire completed…
Research paper
“Tokowa po ya ekolo”: The Military Body Within the Congolese Army
This article explores the conceptualization of the body among former Congolese soldiers living as refugees in Johannesburg. The article draws on extensive fieldwork in Johannesburg, South Africa and employs the concept of deterritorialization and reterritorialization to explain the bodies of…
Research paper
Sexual violence against men in conflict and post-conflict settings: A qualitative research methodology
This article describes the research design and the strategies employed in qualitative research with South Sudanese male refugee survivors of sexual violence who have resettled in two communities in Uganda since the onset of the 2013 South Sudan conflict.
Research paper
The Cultural Problematic in Narratives of Violence against Women and Girls in South Sudan
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 VAWG. In addition,…
Briefing
MONUSCO’s Mandate and the Climate Security Nexus
If we translate the debate on the climate security nexus to a more operational level, we inevitably arrive at the question of whether and to what extent the fight against climate change should be included in the mandate of current…
Research paper
Conflict, trade and the medium-term future of food security in Sudan
This article considers that the classic neoliberal prescription of peace, growth and foreign investment may deepen (and obscure) the needs and grievances of those historically left behind in a dysfunctional development process.
Research paper
Divisive ‘Commonality’: state and insecurity in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Northern donor policies relating to building a common future and building peaceful states and societies go to the heart of national and international security agendas. This article critiques the concept of commonality between donors and recipients and within recipient countries.…
Briefing
One year after the coup: What next for Sudan’s Juba Peace Agreement?
This briefing considers the changing political situation in Sudan, exploring how the relationship between two key factions in the conflict has complicated discussions around the formation of a new political arrangement in Sudan.
Research paper
Sudan: International dimensions to the state and its crisis
This paper locates the internationalisation of Sudanese governance in a historical context.
Research paper
Sudan’s elusive democratisation: civic mobilisation, provincial rebellion and chameleon dictatorships
Sudan experienced two inspirational popular uprisings that brought down military dictatorships, but the ‘Arab Spring’ passed it by. This paper analyses social movements and armed resistance within the dualistic structure of Sudan’s centre and periphery. A pattern of alternating military…
Research paper
Introduction: Making Sense of South Sudan
This introductory essay to a selection of African Affairs articles on South Sudan documents the critical contributions of empirically rich and analytically rigorous research, highly relevant to understanding South Sudan’s crisis, led by South Sudanese scholars. This contrasts with journalism…
Multimedia
South Sudan: The price of war, the price of peace – a graphic story
In December 2013, South Sudan erupted into civil war as President Salva Kiir’s army battled rebel forces led by former Vice-President Riek Machar. Tens of thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. This cartoon tells the story of the…
Research paper
Peace and the security sector in Sudan, 2002–11
This paper examines how contests over military control were played out during peace negotiations and in the implementation of agreements (including the manipulation or violation of the terms of agreements) in Sudan between 2002 and 2011.
Book chapter
Comparing peace processes: Sudan
This chapter examines how contests over military control were played out during peace negotiations and in the implementation of agreements in Sudan between 2002 and 2011.
Thesis
Lugbara “Religion” Revisited: A Study of Social Repair in West Nile, North-West Uganda
This thesis explores processes of transitional justice as post-war social repair. It interrogates the multifarious quests through which Lugbara people of north-west Uganda seek to rebuild their intimate relationships and social lives, with recourse to explanations and therapies for suffering…
Research paper
Geographies of Unease: Witchcraft, Mobility and Insecurity in an African Borderland
This thesis explores processes of transitional justice as post-war social repair. It interrogates the multifarious quests through which Lugbara people of north-west Uganda seek to rebuild their intimate relationships and social lives, with recourse to explanations and therapies for suffering…
Background report
‘Drought as War’ in Northern Uganda: Exploring the Complex Relationship Between Climate Change, Scarcity, and Conflict
That climate change will increase the incidence of violent conflict is a common claim made by both policymakers and climate change activists. I aim to question and critique the simplistic assertion that climate change will cause increased violent conflict, showing…
Book chapter
From violent conflict to slow violence: climate change and post-conflict recovery in Karamoja, Uganda
In literature examining climate change as a potential factor in violent conflict, violence is generally conceived as a readily-apparent, time-bound event. Conversely, the ontologies of slow violence emphasize the insidious ways in which environmental change can, itself, impart violence. This…
Research paper
Charcoal power: The political violence of non-fossil fuel in Uganda
Charcoal is important in Africa due to its centrality to urbanization. Despite this, the politics of charcoal remain largely unexplored. This article asks how political power shapes charcoal production and how charcoal as an energy source shapes political power through…
Research paper
From disaster to devastation: drought as war in northern Uganda
This paper proposes a shift from the concept of disaster to one of devastation when dealing with the destructive consequences of climate change. It argues that today, a discourse of climate-change disaster has become dominant, in which present disasters are…
Book chapter
Legacies of Violence: The Communicability of Spirits and Trauma in Northern Uganda
How may the spread of the biomedical concept ‘trauma’ as well as cen spirits in Northern Uganda be understood as part of syndemic processes of situated concerned responses to violence? In this chapter, we examine legacies of mass violence for…
Background report
Do Local Agreements Forge Peace? The Case of Eastern DRC
The end of the 1998-2003 Congolese war was symbolised by the signing of the ‘All-Inclusive Agreement’ in December 2002. However, due to the continued proliferation of national and foreign armed groups and unaddressed community grievances, this agreement did not bring…
Research paper
Une perspective de paix pour le Soudan en 2002 ? fr
This article analyses the extent to which the international situation immediately following September 11, 2001 created the basis for an end to the civil war in Sudan. The author argues that the situation is handicapped by certain weaknesses: the internal…
Research paper
Foreign Aid In Post-Conflict Countries: The Case Of South Sudan
This paper examines the approach to foreign aid being used in South Sudan, and reflects new thinking in providing assistance to post-conflict countries.
Research paper
When kleptocracy becomes insolvent: Brute causes of the civil war in South Sudan
South Sudan obtained independence in July 2011 as a kleptocracy – a militarized, corrupt neo-patrimonial system of governance. By the time of independence, the South Sudanese “political marketplace” was so expensive that the country’s comparatively copious revenue was consumed by…
Research paper
Interrupting the balance: reconsidering the complexities of conflict in South Sudan
By the start of 2014, violent conflict had erupted across much of South Sudan following initial violence in Juba on 15 December 2013. The speed with which the fighting has spread raises questions regarding the impact of national-level politics on…
Research paper
It takes a village to raise a militia: local politics, the Nuer White Army, and South Sudan’s civil wars
Why does South Sudan continue to experience endemic, low intensity conflicts punctuated by catastrophic civil wars? Reporters and analysts often mischaracterise conflicts in the young country of South Sudan as products of divisive ‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ rivalries and political competition…
Research paper
How the politics of fear generated chaos in South Sudan
Soon after South Sudan achieved independence in 2011, its political landscape grew increasingly volatile. It became almost impossible for international and regional actors to address one crisis before another more serious one erupted. This article combines cultural, political, economic and…
