Publications

Members of the United Nations Security Council, under the co-chairmanship of South Africa and the United States, visited South Sudan last week on the 20thof October 2019. The visit came as the deadline for the formation of the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity (RTGoNU) looms. The Council came to...

This paper reviews the existing transparency and accountability rules to understand the extent to which these have been implemented. Despite the existence of strong petroleum transparency and accountability legal rules, we find that compliance with them has worsened in the last three years.

In April 2019, Sudanese protestors in Khartoum, the capital and other major towns, managed to push their country’s longest reigning dictator, Omer Hassen al-Bashir, out of power after 30 years of a brutal dictatorship. The fall of al-Bashir was a cause for jubilation amongst crowds across the country, and true...

The proportion of older persons in the world is increasing due to the gradual decline in death rates and rise in life expectancy, catching many governments totally unprepared. In South Sudan, the number of older persons was projected to increase by 1.1% of the total population in 2016 (UNDESA 2016).

Recent political developments in the Sudan dominate street conversations and various social media outlets in Juba, South Sudan. The Sudanese revolutionary forces that brought an end to a 30-year rule of President Omar Al Bashir find a lot of sympathy and support among the ordinary South Sudanese citizens, who, at...

For the past several weeks, there have been rising voices of both optimism and frustration, as reports of progress in the implementation of the so-called Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) continued to highlight violations, fresh military attacks, delays in executing ceasefire and security mechanisms...

In the history of every society, there is always a generation that takes the lead to define and determine that society’s destiny. This could, for example, be (a) a generation that stands and lives up to the promise of greater good or common interest; (b) a generation driven by the...

James Dak is a national of South Sudan who sought refugee status in Kenya in 2015 due to the civil war in South Sudan. In 2016, however, the Kenyan government cancelled his visa and returned him to South Sudan where he was charged with treason, among others, and sentenced to death.

Public financial management (PFM) is a key pillar in reforms aimed at building more credible, transparent and accountable governments, especially in post-conflict contexts. The PFM reforms are the focus of multilateral financial institutions and bilateral aid agencies, and in many cases, drive donors’ financial support.

Many analysts and observers of politics in South Sudan point to weak governance as the malefactor for the political crises and lack of progress on socio-economic development in the country. This policy brief, therefore, identifies major governance challenges in South Sudan and assesses whether the recently signed R-ARCSS addresses them.