Evaluating the EU's role and challenges in Sudan and South Sudan

This report analyses the EU’s institutional capacity to carry out conflict early warning, early action, and conflict prevention in two of the most conflict-ridden and war-affected countries in the world: Sudan and South Sudan. It analyses the institutional aspects of EU conflict early warning approaches and assesses the extent to which they are applied in-country and in Brussels to inform policies, strategies and programming processes. It provides a number of recommendations on how the EU can overcome challenges and constraints so that it can better link early warning to effective & timely response to prevent conflict and build peace, under the new Lisbon Treaty architecture. The report concludes by noting that the EU needs to identify its peacebuilding niche in a heavily crowded field of actors. If it decides its niche is related to early warning, conflict prevention and peacebuilding, it needs to prove this through sustained political willingness to engage on the crucial conflict issues discussed above and invest heavily in building up its systems, networks, capacity and tools to be able to play a viable role in both Sudan and South Sudan. The key here would be to develop a coherent approach that is fully grounded in an understanding of the realities of the different conflicts, and developing and mobilising the type of complex political engagement and partnerships that are needed to deliver concrete results in terms of improved stability and security for the Sudanese and South Sudanese people.