South Sudan Hate Speech Report Template

Monitoring and Analysis Report # 4: of Violent Conflict in July 31, 2019 South Sudan This is the fourth out of six reports that are part of an initiative by PeaceTec h Lab to identify, monitor, analyze and report on hate speech trends and their relationship to violence incidents and events on the ground in South S udan. In each of the six reports we will provide insights into recent events identified through our own monitoring and the publicly available ACLED data sets, and will compare our predictions from the previous report with the events that actually took place during the prediction period. We will also be actively maintaining an online portal page which is updated regularly and provides visualizations of the hate speech and violent incidents data in real time. These reports will focus on providing early warning predictions of violence at the state-level in South Sudan, along with analysis of current events on the ground. Our hope is that this information will be used by relevant stakeholders for conflict prevention and mitigation purposes. Latest Events On July 27, heavy fighting was reported in Lobonok, Jubek State (formerly belonging to Central Equatoria State) by the U n i t e d M i ssi o n i n S o u t h S u dan (UNMISS). According to the report, the fight was between the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF) and Thomas Cirillo’s rebel group, the National Salvation Front (NAS). Cirillo formed NAS in M a r c h 2 0 1 7 after resigning from his position as the deputy chief of staff in the South Sudan army. In September, 2018, NAS refused to sign the R e vi t a l i z e d A g r e e m e n t o n t h e R e so l u t i o n o f C o n f l i c t in S o u t h S u d a n (R-ARCSS) and has been calling for the toppling of the current administration ever since. NAS representatives have also been asking for the issue of ‘federalism' to be included in the R-ARCSS. Federalism has become a polarizing issue in South Sudan since, in 2015, the administration divided the formerly ten states into thirty-two states along tribal lines. On July 19, youth from Tonj State attacked Northern Liech state raiding 100-1000 cows and killing three people. Unfortunately, cattle raiding is a common practice in these predominantly Nuer and Dinka states. On June 3, R a d i o M i r a y a reported that “two thousand people have been displaced after days of fighting between armed youth from cattle camps in Twic and Northern Liech states.” As an effort to mitigate these recurring conflicts, the governors from the respective states initiated a U N M I S S s u p p o r t e d c o n f e r e n c e to discuss the recent events and prevent future violence. Peace conferences in these areas go back to 1999 to the Dinka-Nuer West Bank Peace and Reconciliation Conference, or as it is famously known, W u n li t . Wunlit is famously known for brokering a truce between the late Dr. John Garang de Mabior and former Vice-President Dr. Riek Machar after the 1991 SPLM/A split. On July 21, ten people were killed in a clash between the subclans of Gony and Thuyic of the Agar clan in Western Lake States. According to Radio Tamazuj, the S t a t e M i n i s t e r o f I n f o r m a t i o n confirmed this to be an incident of revenge killing due to a clash from the week before. Cattle raidings and revenge killings are common in Western and Eastern Lake States, which previously led to the president declaring a s t a t e o f e m e r g e n c y after one hundred and seventy people were killed in 2017. The state of emergency was later lifted in May 2019. EARLY WARNING OF CONFLICT Week of July 29-August 4 The predictive maps below present the likelihood of each state experiencing one or more of the following event types (as classified by ACLED): 1) Violence against Civilians; 2) Battles; 3) Protests or Riots. For the Week of July 29-August 4, PeaceTech Lab's statistical model predicts higher likelihoods of these events in the municipalities shown in darker red on the map on the left. The map on the right applies a probability threshold to forecast which of these municipalities can be expected to experience one or more of these types of events over the next week. These States are Wau (Wau), Gbudwe (Yambio), Yei River (Yei) and Jubek (Juba) If you have any feedback on this report and/or suggestions of the most useful types of content to include, please email us at [email protected]..

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