Publications

This concept paper outlines some of the principal elements involved in promoting peace, unity, reconciliation and a shared sense of national identity, the overriding goals of the National Dialogue. The National Dialogue is an opportunity to address the complex web of conflicts afflicting South Sudan through a top-down-bottom-up process that...

When the Sudd Institute was established in 2012, the people of South Sudan had just received the declaration of their new state with a mix of reactions. Independence was the culmination of the political evolution that had been long in the making and anticipated as the possible panacea for half...

The South Sudanese parties to the conflict signed the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (ARCISS) in August 2015 and essentially agreed to establish a federal system of government. This raises three critical questions.

This paper discusses the state of South Sudan’s national unity. Our insights are based on interviews conducted with members of parliament, representatives of women and youth, civil society organizations, intellectuals, and representatives of political parties residing in Juba, South Sudan.

President Salva Kiir Mayardit announced in December 2016 a national dialogue program that supposedly enables the citizens to collectively debate the future of their distraught country. The debate includes how to resolve the conflict, respond to a growing humanitarian crisis, and address the enduring ills of governance in the country.

Land tenure systems have implications for food security, access to water, natural resources, pastures and settlement during droughts and flood disasters. Although the South Sudanese Land Act 2009 recognizes both formal and customary land tenure systems, little is known in practice about the extent to which these systems promote climate...

South Sudan is economically and politically distressed. Weak institutions, mismanagement, and corruption have for years plagued the nascent Republic’s economy, bearing markedly on political processes and outcomes. Hilde Johnson (2016) and Christopher Clapham (2012) suggest such is often expected of liberators who have just become a government in a country...

As South Sudanese warring parties are set, albeit be grudgingly, to embark on implementing the peace agreement they signed in August 2015, a sense of cautious optimism is being expressed, and rightly so. Since it broke out in mid-December 2013, the war has heavily inflicted on the young nation...

There have been flurries of calls to place South Sudan under the UN trusteeship. The calls come mostly from the U.S. experts, with the most recent one coming from Hon. Kate Almquist Knopf, who testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

For nearly a decade now, several armed groups have emerged all over the country, with some of them sometimes signing agreements with the government that last only a very short time. What normally follows, as historically evident, is a cycle of rebellions and sojourning political settlements, with rebel leaders shuttling...