Citizen Perspectives on the National Dialogue in South Sudan
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Citizen Perspectives on the National Dialogue in South Sudan David Deng and Rajab Mohandis May, 2021 Citizen perspectives on the National Dialogue in South Sudan | 2 Photo Credits: UNMISS / Eric Kanalstein South Sudan National Dialogue Facebook and Twitter pages - @SSNatDialogue Creative Commons Citizen perspectives on the National Dialogue in South Sudan | 3 Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the many citizens of South Sudan and its international partners who graciously shared their time and their views on the National Dialogue process. We would also like to thank Victoria Jacob and Alfred Uliny for their support with research activities in Yambio and Wau. This study was made possible by financial and technical support from the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). The views in this report are those of the authors and the people they interviewed and do not necessarily represent the views of the South Sudan Civil Society Forum (SSCSF), Detcro or USIP. Copyright ©2021 All rights reserved. About the Authors David Deng is a human rights lawyer who has been conducting research and advocacy in South Sudan since 2008. Deng’s work has touched on a range of issues, including citizen perspectives on peace processes and transitional justice; land policy and housing, land and property (HLP) rights; and security and justice provision at the local level. Rajab Mohandis is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Organization for Responsive Governance (ORG) based in Juba, South Sudan. Mohandis is a signatory to the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) and represents civil society in the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (R-JMEC), an oversight mechanism of the peace agreement. He is also the coordinator of the South Sudan Civil Society Forum (SSCSF). Citizen perspectives on the National Dialogue in South Sudan | 4 Acronyms ARCSS Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan CHRSS Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan CNHPR Committee for National Healing, Peace and Reconciliation CPA Comprehensive Peace Agreement HLRF High-Level Revitalization Forum IDP Internally Displaced Person IGAD Intergovernmental Authority for Development NUF Necessary Unified Forces POC Protection of Civilian Site R-ARCSS Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan R-JMEC Revitalized Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission R-TGONU Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity SPLM Sudan People’s Liberation Movement SPLM-IO Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition SSCSF South Sudan Civil Society Forum SSOA South Sudan Opposition Alliance SSTV South Sudan Television R-TGONU Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity UN United Nations Citizen perspectives on the National Dialogue in South Sudan | 5 Contents Acknowledgements 3 About the Authors 3 Acronyms 4 Introduction 6 Context 8 Overview of the Conflict 8 Past Dialogue Processes 10 Perspectives on the National Dialogue 12 Initiation and Restructuring 12 Awareness and Sources of Information 18 Horizontal Inclusivity 20 Vertical Inclusivity 22 Quality of Citizen Participation 26 Complementarity with IGAD Peace Process 30 A Politically Tumultuous National Conference 36 Conclusion and Recommendations 40 Citizen perspectives on the National Dialogue in South Sudan | 6 Introduction On 14 December 2016, President Salva Kiir announced plans to launch a National Dialogue to “save the country from disintegration and usher in a new era of peace, stability and prosperity.” In the eyes of many, the timing, just one day before the third anniversary of the civil war, could not have been worse. The outbreak of violence earlier that year and the flight of the opposition leader, Dr. Riek Machar, to the Democratic Republic of Congo and onwards to South Africa seemed to be a fatal blow to the peace agreement. War had spread to every region of the country. A month before the President’s announcement, the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, had warned of potential genocide in Yei and two months after the announcement a conflict- induced famine would be declared in southern Unity. South Sudan was arguably at its lowest point. Unsurprisingly, the President’s announcement was met with considerable skepticism from both South Sudanese and the government’s international partners. People viewed it as an attempt by the President and his inner circle to undermine the peace process and to confuse and mislead the public about their commitment to peace. They described it as a ‘monologue’ since key opposition parties, including the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO), refused to participate. But to its proponents, the National Dialogue was an attempt to save a nation that was rapidly devolving into chaos. They had given up on a regional mediation effort that was beset with problems and argued that it was time to pursue homegrown solutions to the conflict. Fast forward to November 2020. The world is in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic. The peace process in South Sudan is faltering once again. After more than seventeen months of what was meant to be an eight-month pre-transitional period, the parties had finally managed to establish the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity (R-TGONU) in February 2020.1 However, the governance vacuum, coupled with political maneuvering among elites at the national level, has contributed to a sharp increase in subnational violence in several parts of the country. The humanitarian impacts are further exacerbated by some of the worst flooding in recent memory. Hundreds of thousands are displaced, and the worst-hit populations have been pushed to the brink of famine.2 In Juba, the National Dialogue was preparing for its final activity—a national conference that would bring together 518 delegates from each of the 79 counties in South Sudan and from the contested border area of Abyei. At the national conference, members of the National Dialogue shared what they had learned from dozens of grassroots consultations and three regional dialogues conducted between May 2017 and August 2019. 1 The President, First Vice-President, four Vice-Presidents and ministers assumed their positions in February and March 2020. Nine out of 10 state governors were appointed in June and July 2020 and the final governor (Upper Nile) was appointed in January 2021. At this writing, the Revitalized Transitional National Legislature has yet to be appointed. 2 Sam Mednick, Floods, fighting, famine: Inside South Sudan’s triple crisis, The New Humanitarian (8 Feb. 2021), available at https://www. thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2021/2/8/floods-fighting-famine-south-sudan-crisis. Citizen perspectives on the National Dialogue in South Sudan | 7 In all, the National Dialogue spoke to some 20,000 people across the country and in the diaspora. The discussions are summarized in twenty reports, available on the National Dialogue website, as well as video and audio recordings that are being stored by the National Dialogue for future reference. Among the resolutions of the national conference were the adoption of “a mixed federal system with full political, administrative, and financial powers to the states and restricts federal interference in state affairs,” and that land shall be “owned by the communities and …managed by various levels of government in accordance with the law.” Perhaps most controversially, in their cover note to the reports, the National Dialogue co-chairs place the blame for the country’s problems squarely on the shoulders of the political leadership, calling upon the President, First Vice-President and four Vice- Presidents to stand aside in elections at the end of the transitional period. At this writing, the National Dialogue is in a quagmire. On the one hand, it has generated a wealth of information and recommendations that have a democratic legitimacy that the peace agreement lacks. On the other hand, the very government that is meant to implement these recommendations is comprised of political leaders who, for various reasons, are highly skeptical of its outcomes. The ability of the proponents of the National Dialogue to bridge this gap will determine whether the initiative will have a lasting impact on the conflict or whether it will be forgotten like so many past reconciliation initiatives. This report provides an overview of the National Dialogue in South Sudan with a focus on citizen perceptions of the process. Data was compiled through a combination of in-person and virtual interviews and focus groups conducted at various points between June 2020 and April 2021.3 Overall, researchers spoke to a total of 60 people in four locations: Juba, Wau, Yambio and Nairobi.4 After an overview of the context, including an examination of past dialogue processes in South Sudan, the report discusses the initiation of the National Dialogue, people’s awareness of the process, inclusivity both in a horizontal and vertical sense, quality of citizen participation, complementarity with the peace process, and the how the national conference and its outcomes have been received. 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 processes moving forward. 3 Researchers conducted 40 semi-structured interviews (8 in Juba, 18 in Wau, 12 in Yambio, 2 in Nairobi) and 8 focus group discussions (4 in Wau and 4 in Yambio). The focus groups were relatively small with just four participants in each group, except for one of the focus groups in Wau which had just two participants. 4 While the three locations in South Sudan do provide a range of views from the national and subnational level, they cannot be said to represent the full diversity of South Sudan. One of the main criterions used to select the locations was the strength of researcher networks and the availability of secure internet facilities that would allow for virtual interviews to be done in a safe, effective and ethically responsible manner in the context of a global pandemic.