Peace and conflict assessment of South Sudan 2012

This report is an assessment of peace, conflict and peacebuilding in South Sudan, conducted between June 2011 and March 2012. It looks beyond the immediate problems faced by South Sudanese, and proposes a long-term approach to building peace.

It analyses how local, national and international dynamics around independence in July 2011 and the end of the six-and-a-half-year formal Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) process with Sudan have impacted on peace and conflict in 2011–2012 and how they are likely to influence peace and development over the next decade.

Using International Alert’s Peacebuilding Framework, it assesses the dynamics, structures and opportunities for building a positive peace under five Peace Factors: Power, Economy, Safety, Justice and Well-being. It also analyses some of the challenges and impact of peacebuilding actors, institutions and strategies over the CPA period and provides a series of recommendations on improving peacebuilding programming beyond 2012 in terms of prioritising approaches, target locations and actors/partners.

It concludes that, while the enjoyment of peace is highly variable across South Sudan, the nation as a whole and few if any of its constituent peoples or counties have yet experienced a positive, sustainable peace. Conflictual and rapidly worsening relations with Sudan as well as uncertainty about the length of suspension of oil exports (and thus revenues) appear likely to aggravate longstanding deficits in governance, security, economic opportunity, justice and reconciliation. This in turn increases the risk that South Sudan will become more violent in 2012 and beyond.