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Strategic Peacebuilding- the Role of Civilians and Civil Society in Preventing Mass Atrocities in South Sudan
SPECIAL REPORT Strategic Peacebuilding The Role of Civilians and Civil Society in Preventing Mass Atrocities in South Sudan The Cases of the SPLM Leadership Crisis (2013), the Military Standoff at General Malong’s House (2017), and the Wau Crisis (2016–17) NYATHON H. MAI JULY 2020 WEEKLY REVIEW June 7, 2020 The Boiling Frustrations in South Sudan Abraham A. Awolich outh Sudan’s 2018 peace agreement that ended the deadly 6-year civil war is in jeopardy, both because the parties to it are back to brinkmanship over a number S of mildly contentious issues in the agreement and because the implementation process has skipped over fundamental st eps in a rush to form a unity government. It seems that the parties, the mediators and guarantors of the agreement wereof the mind that a quick formation of the Revitalized Government of National Unity (RTGoNU) would start to build trust between the leaders and to procure a public buy-in. Unfortunately, a unity government that is devoid of capacity and political will is unable to address the fundamentals of peace, namely, security, basic services, and justice and accountability. The result is that the citizens at all levels of society are disappointed in RTGoNU, with many taking the law, order, security, and survival into their own hands due to the ubiquitous absence of government in their everyday lives. The country is now at more risk of becoming undone at its seams than any other time since the liberation war ended in 2005. The current st ate of affairs in the country has been long in the making. -
South Sudan: Opportunities and Challenges for Africa’S Newest Country
The Republic of South Sudan: Opportunities and Challenges for Africa’s Newest Country Ted Dagne Specialist in African Affairs July 1, 2011 Congressional Research Service 7-5700 www.crs.gov R41900 CRS Report for Congress Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress The Republic of South Sudan: Opportunities and Challenges for Africa’s Newest Country Summary In January 2011, South Sudan held a referendum to decide between unity or independence from the central government of Sudan as called for by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the country’s decades-long civil war in 2005. According to the South Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC), 98.8% of the votes cast were in favor of separation. In February 2011, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir officially accepted the referendum result, as did the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, the United States, and other countries. On July 9, 2011, South Sudan is to officially declare its independence. The Obama Administration welcomed the outcome of the referendum and pledged to recognize South Sudan as an independent country in July 2011. The Administration is expected to send a high-level presidential delegation to South Sudan’s independence celebration on July 9, 2011. A new ambassador is also expected to be named to South Sudan. South Sudan faces a number of challenges in the coming years. Relations between Juba, in South Sudan, and Khartoum are poor, and there are a number of unresolved issues between them. The crisis in the disputed area of Abyei remains a contentious issue, despite a temporary agreement reached in mid-June 2011. -
Addis PEACE a 411St ME HEADS O BANJUL, 30 DECEM AFRICAN
AFRICAN UNION UNION AFRICAINE UNIÃO AFRICANA Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, P.O. Box: 3243 Tel.: (251‐11) 5513 822 Fax: (251‐11) 5519 321 Email: situationroom@africa‐union.org PEACE AND SECURITY COUNCIL 411st MEETING AT THE LEVEL OF HEADS OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT BANJUL, THE GAMBIA 30 DECEMBER 2013 PSC/AHG/3(CDXI) REPORT OF THE CHAIRPERSON OFF THE COMMISSION ON THE SITUATION IN SOUTH SUDAN PSC/AHG/3(CDXI) Page 1 REPORT OF THE CHAIRPERSON OF THE COMMISSION ON THE SITUATION IN SOUTH SUDAN I. INTRODUCTION 1. The present report is submitted in the context of the meeting of Council to be held in Banjul, The Gambia, on 30 December 2013, to deliberate on the unfolding situation in South Sudan. The conflict in South Sudan erupted on 15 December, in the context of a political challenge to the President of the Republic of South Sudan, from leading members of the ruling party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). This rapidly mutated into violent confrontation and rebellion. The conflict imperils the lives and wellbeing of South Sudanese, jeopardizes the future of the young nation, and is a threat to regional peace and security. 2. The report provides a background to the current crisis, a chronology of the events of the last six months and an overview of the regional, continental and international response. The report concludes with observations on the way forward. II. BACKGROUND 3. The current conflict represents the accumulation of unresolved political disputes within the leadership of the SPLM. The leaders had disagreements on fundamental aspects of the party and country’s leadership, governance and direction. -
Conflict and Crisis in South Sudan's Equatoria
SPECIAL REPORT NO. 493 | APRIL 2021 UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE www.usip.org Conflict and Crisis in South Sudan’s Equatoria By Alan Boswell Contents Introduction ...................................3 Descent into War ..........................4 Key Actors and Interests ............ 9 Conclusion and Recommendations ...................... 16 Thomas Cirillo, leader of the Equatoria-based National Salvation Front militia, addresses the media in Rome on November 2, 2019. (Photo by Andrew Medichini/AP) Summary • In 2016, South Sudan’s war expand- Equatorians—a collection of diverse South Sudan’s transitional period. ed explosively into the country’s minority ethnic groups—are fighting • On a national level, conflict resolu- southern region, Equatoria, trig- for more autonomy, local or regional, tion should pursue shared sover- gering a major refugee crisis. Even and a remedy to what is perceived eignty among South Sudan’s con- after the 2018 peace deal, parts of as (primarily) Dinka hegemony. stituencies and regions, beyond Equatoria continue to be active hot • Equatorian elites lack the external power sharing among elites. To spots for national conflict. support to viably pursue their ob- resolve underlying grievances, the • The war in Equatoria does not fit jectives through violence. The gov- political process should be expand- neatly into the simplified narratives ernment in Juba, meanwhile, lacks ed to include consultations with of South Sudan’s war as a power the capacity and local legitimacy to local community leaders. The con- struggle for the center; nor will it be definitively stamp out the rebellion. stitutional reform process of South addressed by peacebuilding strate- Both sides should pursue a nego- Sudan’s current transitional period gies built off those precepts. -
3433 ISS Paper 158 New.Indd
Sudan’s foreign relations with Asia China and the politics of ‘looking east’ Daniel Large ISS Paper 158 • February 2008 Price: R15.00 Introduction isolating the role of China in Sudan, the paper seeks to show how it is a salient part of Northern Sudan’s ‘look China has featured prominently in recent international east’ foreign economic relations. In addition, while coverage of Sudan. The high–water mark of attention in no way as important as China in the economy of came with the build up to and passing of United Sudan today, India has sought to expand relations as Nations Security Council Resolution 1769 that part of its own African engagement. authorised an African Union–UN mission for Darfur. China’s vote in favour of this resolution was widely First, the paper discusses the background to relations greeted. It prompted unusually positive headlines, and the main factors that have facilitated China’s which contrasted with previous coverage of its role expansion within Sudan. Second, it surveys the nature of in Sudan (such as ‘Empowering Evil: China aids the ties between Sudan and Malaysia, India, Japan and Sudan’s killers’, Brookes 2007). Subsequent events China, with particular emphasis on economic relations. have continued to place China at the Third, it outlines China’s changing role in forefront of coverage of Sudan. This has Sudan in connection to Darfur. It traces happened for good reason given the the evolution of China’s diplomatic role, economic importance of China to Sudan the elements of continuity in its relations and that China’s Sudan engagement has Sudan has with Sudan and the development of its acquired wider significance in relation to increasingly been relations with Chad. -
Interna Tional Edition
Number 2 2014 ISSN 2196-3940 INTERNATIONAL South Sudan’s Newest War: When Two Old Men Divide a Nation Carlo Koos and Thea Gutschke A political power struggle between South Sudanese president Salva Kiir and former vice president Riek Machar resulted in violent clashes between ethnic army factions in December 2013. Since then fighting has spread across South Sudan and claimed the lives of around 10,000 people. Analysis South Sudan has experienced several insurgencies since gaining independence in 2011. Nevertheless, the current war has the potential to be more destructive to the country than previous ones because both parties – President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and his opponent, former vice president Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer – are instrumentalizing ethnic identities and pulling their communities into their personal feud. A number of latent issues have contributed to the current crisis. These include South Sudan’s dysfunctional political system and inadequate political leadership, the historical distrust between the Dinka and the Nuer, and the country’s unhealthy EDITION dependence on oil rents. The civilian population is carrying the cost of the conflict. More than 10,000 people have been killed and more than one million displaced since the outbreak of the latest violence. Livelihoods have been destroyed and more than 3.7 million people, approximately a third of the population, are estimated to be at risk of food insecurity. The short- and long-term economic consequences for South Sudan are harsh. Oil production has dropped by 40 percent, severely affecting the state’s budget. Trade has suffered. In the long run, political instability will jeopardize foreign direct investment in South Sudan. -
Sudan Opposition to the Government, Including
Country Policy and Information Note Sudan: Opposition to the government, including sur place activity Version 2.0 November 2018 Preface Purpose This note provides country of origin information (COI) and analysis of COI for use by Home Office decision makers handling particular types of protection and human rights claims (as set out in the basis of claim section). It is not intended to be an exhaustive survey of a particular subject or theme. It is split into two main sections: (1) analysis of COI; and (2) COI. These are explained in more detail below. Asessment This section analyses the evidence relevant to this note – i.e. the COI section; refugee/human rights laws and policies; and applicable caselaw – by describing this and its inter-relationships, and provides an assessment on whether, in general: x A person is reasonably likely to face a real risk of persecution or serious harm x A person is able to obtain protection from the state (or quasi state bodies) x A person is reasonably able to relocate within a country or territory x Claims are likely to justify granting asylum, humanitarian protection or other form of leave, and x If a claim is refused, it is likely or unlikely to be certifiable as ‘clearly unfounded’ under section 94 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Decision makers must, however, still consider all claims on an individual basis, taking into account each case’s specific facts. Country of origin information The country information in this note has been carefully selected in accordance with the general principles of COI research as set out in the Common EU [European Union] Guidelines for Processing Country of Origin Information (COI), dated April 2008, and the Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation’s (ACCORD), Researching Country Origin Information – Training Manual, 2013. -
Hostilities Between Sudan and South Sudan a Timeline of Recent Events
Hostilities between Sudan and South Sudan A Timeline of Recent Events April 2012 February 11, 2012: Sudan and South Sudan sign a “non-aggression” pact during talks in Addis Ababa agreeing to “respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and to “refrain from launching any attack, including bombardment.” 1 March 13, 2012: Sudan and South Sudan initial two agreements in Addis Ababa that, if signed, would grant South Sudanese and Sudanese citizens certain freedoms in the other state, and commit the two states to a timeline to demarcate the agreed-upon areas of the North-South border.2 The round of talks concludes in a new “spirit of coopera- tion,” and with the announcement that the agreements would be signed in a bilateral summit attended by the two heads of states in Juba.3 March 23, 2012: Pagan Amum, South Sudan’s chief negotiator in talks with Sudan over outstanding post-independence issues, travels to Khartoum and personally delivers a letter of invitation to the President al-Bashir to join in a summit with Kiir in South Sudan. Bashir accepts the invitation.4 March 26, 2012: Clashes break out between Sudan’s and South Sudan’s armies in the disputed oil-rich area of Heglig.5 Both sides trade accusations about who instigated the violence. Southern officials accuse Khartoum of bombing southern troops in the disputed border area of Jau and of launching a ground attack on South Sudan bases south of Heglig oil field. Khartoum denies bombing Jau and accuses South Sudan of attacking Heglig with the support of Darfur rebels. -
Situation Report
Institute for Security Studies Situation Report Date Issued: 23 August 2005 Author: Mariam Jooma1 Distribution: General Contact: [email protected] Feeding the peace: Challenges facing human security in post-Garang South Sudan2 Introduction When we started this process and when we signed the agreement on Security Arrangements, we thought we had reached the peak, the top of the hill, but then we discovered that there were more hills and we surmounted those but then we discovered there were more hills and we surmounted all those, tonight we have surmounted the last hills. There are no more hills as I talk. I believe the remaining is flat ground. But we will walk with speed rather than run, lest we fall down.3 It wasn’t long ago that throngs of well-wishers from south Sudan descended upon Khartoum to greet John Garang De Mabior, the former rebel leader and long- time Achilles’ heel of the National Congress Party (NCP) government, on the occasion of his inauguration as vice-president of Sudan. The symbolism of former enemies sharing a common political stage spoke of a society not only war- fatigued but expectant of the dividends of peace. Observers described the mood as a “rare moment of hope” for the deeply fractured country. As this situation report was being written, news of the sudden death of the new vice- president made the headlines. This event immediately called into question the durability of the most recent peace agreement, and the way forward for the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), particularly in the light of the immediate violence that erupted in Khartoum and Juba resulting in the death of some 130 people. -
Gabriel Tang Gatwich Chan ('Tang-Ginye')
Gabriel Tang Gatwich Chan ('Tang-Ginye') Gabriel Tang Gatwich Chan (often referred to as 'Tang-Ginye', a nickname meaning ‘long pipe’), a Nuer from Fangak county in Jonglei state, is synonymous with a brutal chapter of the history of Sudan’s 1983–2005 North–South civil war. Deadly ‘South– South’ violence resulted in some of the worst atrocities committed during the war and deepened internal rifts among Southerners that have not been resolved in the six-year interim period that began with the 2005 signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Wartime roles Considered one of the first generation of Southern guerrillas, Tang-Ginye began his military career in a faction of the Anyanya movement during the first civil war (1956– 1972). Suspicious of the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, he quickly rebelled again, joining one of the mainly Nuer militias known as Anyanya II. In 1984, together with other Anyanya II leaders such as Paulino Matiep and Gordon Kong, he formed an alliance with the government in Khartoum led at the time by Jaafar Nimeiri, hoping to create a Nuer army to fight the ‘Dinka’ Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). He and his Jebel forces remained allied to Khartoum in 1988, when a large number of Anyanya II defected to the SPLA, under the leadership of the late John Garang. His forces were aligned with Riek Machar’s Khartoum-backed Nasir faction following the SPLA split in 1991, and then became part of the South Sudan Defense Forces (SSDF) as part of the 1997 Khartoum Agreement, with direct links to Military Intelligence in Khartoum. -
Working Title Here
Network Text Analysis in Computer-Intensive Rapid Ethnography Retrieval: An Example from Political Networks of Sudan* Laurent Tambayong California State University at Fullerton; [email protected] Kathleen M. Carley Carnegie Mellon University; [email protected] Abstract: Advances in text analysis, particularly the ability to extract network based information from texts, is enabling researches to conduct detailed socio-cultural ethnographies rapidly by retrieving characteristic descriptions from texts and fusing the results from varied sources. We describe this process and illustrate it in the context of conflict in the Sudan. We show how network information can be extracted from vast quantities of unstructured texts-based information using computer assisted processes. This is illustrated by an examination of changes in the political networks in Sudan as extracted from the Sudan Tribune. We find that this approach enables rapid high level assessment of a socio-cultural environment, generates results that are viewed as accurate by subject matter experts, and match actual historical events. The relative value of this socio-cultural analysis approach is discussed. Keywords: social networks; text mining; network text analysis; rapid ethnography retrieval (RER); Sudan _________________________ *This work is part of the Rapid Ethnographic Retrieval project at the center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS) of the School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon University (under a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant, number N00014-08-1-1186. Additional support was provided by CASOS, the center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Office of Naval Research, or the U.S. -
The Republic of South Sudan Samuel Totten
Social Education 75(4), pp 215–219 ©2011 National Council for the Social Studies The Birth of a New Nation: The Republic of South Sudan Samuel Totten In early July, the country of Sudan, wracked by civil war since the 1980s, officially split formed, the Sudan People’s Liberation into two separate nations, Sudan and South Sudan. Six months earlier, over a seven-day Movement/Army (SPLM/A). Founded period, the people in southern Sudan had voted in a national referendum on whether to in 1983, it fought for self government and secede from the North. The voters had two choices: “Separation” or “Unity.” For the equal rights for the people of the South. vote to be valid, 60 percent of registered voters had to participate. For the referendum During the brutal civil war, southern vil- to pass, a simple majority had to vote in favor of independence. lages were destroyed, southerners were enslaved, churches were wrecked, and The referendum came about as a the South, extracting both oil and water at traditional religious practices suppressed result of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace will, and refused to invest the oil revenues by forces fighting for the North. Agreement signed between the North in southern Sudan. South Sudan is one of (whose population is predominantly the least developed and most poverty- The Comprehensive Peace Arab and Muslim) and the South (whose stricken regions in the world. According to Agreement population largely identify as African and the World Bank, in the North, 46 percent A long series of diplomatic efforts are mostly Christians and followers of live below the poverty line, in the South throughout the 1990s by leaders from traditional animist religions).