Attachments
Summary
In Western Bahr el-Ghazal State, the Panel of Experts on South Sudan met graduates of the Necessary Unified Forces waiting for news of their deployment. They had done what the peace process asked of them but had by then been left for months without pay or adequate food supplies. While increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the process, they also remained hopeful. Few saw any viable alternatives to the political process, in which they were still proud to play a small part. They continued, therefore, to report, twice a week, for parades.
Their experience is likely familiar to many South Sudanese, whose patience, trust in the process and ability to survive have been tested in equal measure since the signing of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan in 2018.
The date of 22 February 2023 would have marked the end of the transitional period, had it not been for the two-year extension agreed in Juba in August 2022. As the symbolic date approached, the Government issued a lengthy press statement outlining its achievements while stressing that everything would remain “business as usual” for the Government throughout the extension.
Implicit in that message was the need to allay two concerns. First, that the extension would be used to undermine the fragile power-sharing structures ahead of the implementation of the most challenging provisions of the peace agreement, notably its security provisions, constitution-drafting process and preparations for elections. Second, that “business as usual” would mean further de lays, not the progress that peace once promised.
The transitional period was not supposed to last for such a long time. It was also intended to be buttressed by significant reforms that would bring security, economic stability and development, while remedying the democratic deficit of the current arrangements through a clear timeline towards elections.
As stressed by the Government in its statement of 21 February, some progress has been made. The Transitional Government of National Unity in Juba has survived, while a series of laws have started to pave the way for the constitution-drafting process and eventual elections in December 2024. The first batch of approximately 55,000 Necessary Unified Forces elements has now graduated, even if they are yet to be deployed.
At the same time, displacement is now at its highest levels since the peace agreement was signed, while food insecurity remains at its highest levels since independence. Being a woman or a humanitarian in South Sudan remains as dangerous as ever. More than two thirds of the population will need humanitarian assistance in 2023. For most, especially outside Juba, the transitional period has not brought tangible progress.
The deteriorating humanitarian situation is partly the consequence of violence. In recent years and months, most parts of the country have experienced serious clashes between well-armed forces leading to deaths, displacement, serious human rights abuses, conflict-related sexual violence and impediments to the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Panel has documented violence and abuses, including serious conflict-related gender-based violence, in Upper Nile, Jonglei and Central Equatoria States. Much of this violence flows from the convergence of multiple weaknesses in the implementation of the peace process to date.
Efforts to weaken opposition groups, continued political reliance on local youth militias and delays in the formation of a unified national army have fragmented the security landscape, compounded by the free flow of weapons between civilians and the military. Humanitarian and economic crises have pitted communities against one another in competition for increasingly scarce resources, compounded by flooding and impediments to humanitarian relief. Those struggles have, in turn, been politicized by local and national leaders whose own fortunes often hinge on their ability to mobilize violence.
Increasingly, however, violence has also flowed from growing dissatisfaction with the political process in Juba. Delays and deteriorating humanitarian conditions have tested the patience and trust of many political and military leaders in the country’s interior, who have increasingly sought to forge their own path through a transitional period that, to many, no longer feels temporary. In doing so, they have mobilized forces to contest local territory and resources, such as river checkpoints and cattle, while national leaders have found themselves less able to control and direct the violence.
Oil revenues, dispersed across an array of accounts and prone to diversion and misappropriation, have largely failed to reach the institutions that might stabilize the situation through regular salary payments, humanitarian relief and development.
Many of those findings are not contested. Much of the debate has, instead, focused on semantics. Leaders, eager to absolve themselves of command responsibility, have sought to label the violence as “intercommunal”, while efforts to distinguish it from recent periods of civil war have emphasized its “subnational” features. The fragmentation of opposition groups, facilitated by government negotiators, have made it possible to claim that the signatories to the agreement have avoided direct conflict, even as their allied militias and recent comrades clash.
Efforts to control narratives, including with elections on the horizon, have also seen continued constraints on civic space, including increased harassment and detention of journalists and online activists both inside and outside South Sudan.
As the extended transitional period gets under way, “business as usual” will undoubtedly conjure a variety of expectations across South Sudan. The stability of that period will likely turn on the Government’s ability to reward the patience of those who remain committed to peace, rather than those who have sought to reshape it through violence.