Kapoeta North County, Eastern Equatoria State
DEMOGRAPHY
2008 NBS Census population: 103,084
2021 NBS PES population estimate*: 103,175
2022 UN OCHA population estimate*: 157,435
Ethnic groups and languages: Toposa
Displacement Figures Q3 2022: 14,103 IDPs (+8,155 Q1 2020) and 1,535 returnees (+66 Q1 2020).
IPC Food Security: November 2022 – Crisis (Phase 3); IPC Projections: December to March 2023 – Emergency (Phase 4); April to July 2023 – Emergency (Phase 4)
ECONOMY & LIVELIHOODS
Kapoeta North County is located in Eastern Equatoria State. It borders Kapoeta East County to the east, Kapoeta South County and Budi County to the south, and Lopa/Lafon County to the west. It also borders Pibor County (Pibor Administrative Area) to the north.
The county falls within the south-eastern semi-arid pastoral livelihoods zone. It is mostly arid and residents engage in animal husbandry as their primary means of livelihood, with some subsistence farming also taking place. An estimated 56% of households in Kapoeta North County engaged in farming, with a gross cereal yield of 0.8 tonnes per hectare in 2021 (FAO/WFP 2022), increasing to 0.9 tonnes per hectare in 2022 (FAO/WFP 2023). Competition over resources drives intercommunal conflict as the county has grazing land but limited access to water during the dry season. As a result, resident herders tend to migrate to the flood plains of neighbouring Lafon County during the dry season, which often brings them into conflict with local herders and farmers. Changes in weather patterns, which have at different times contributed to droughts that have dried up water sources for cattle or to flooding that have displaced populations, have worsened this pattern by leading herders to seek out water points in other areas. Most households rely on the local market for staple foods.
The IPC projected the county as being at a crisis (IPC level 3) level of food insecurity in November 2022, with conditions projected to worsen to emergency levels (IPC level 4) until at least July 2023. Food insecurity has been a critical challenge for Kapoeta North for an extended period of time. Conditions began to worsen in 2013 and 2014 as a result of months of drought followed by unusually heavy rainfalls that destroyed crops, making the local population resort to wild food sources in the area. A 2017 report from UNICEF indicated that acute malnutrition rates were at 17.3% in the county, above the emergency threshold. Threats to food security across the state more broadly include conflict-related insecurity that disrupts market access, weather-related shocks, deprecating currency, rising market prices and dwindling cereal stocks at household level.
INFRASTRUCTURE & SERVICES
The county’s headquarters are located in Rwotho/Riwoto. Humanitarian actors have faced access challenges, particularly for populations residing in more rural parts of the county due to the poor road network and occasional subnational clashes.
While Kapoeta North’s educational facilities do not currently meet the needs of all its youth, Kapoeta North is home to five (5) Early Childhood Education centers and five (5) primary schools. There are no secondary schools currently operating in the county. In 2018 REACH reported that only 13% of assessed settlements in the county were able to access educational institutions. More recently, OCHA (2021) highlighted Kapoeta North as among the counties reporting the weakest education services.
Kapoeta North County was reported to have seventeen (17) health facilities including sixteen (16) functional health facilities, among them fifteen (15) PHCUs and one (1) PHCC in 2022. This means that there were an estimated 1.43 PHCUs per 15,000 people and 0.32 PHCCs per 50,000 people according to the WHO. No hospitals were reported in Kapoeta North County.
According to OCHA’s Humanitarian Needs Overview for 2023, the county has around 105,500 people with humanitarian needs (compared with 107,300 in 2021), which represents around 66% of the estimated population for Kapoeta North County reported in the HNO.
CONFLICT DYNAMICS
Kapoeta North is a predominantly Toposa area, with the administrative headquarters of Rwotho/Riwoto located close to Kapoeta town in Kapoeta South County. Areas further north of Rwotho town are particularly remote and inaccessible during the rainy season. Tensions relating to movements of cattle from Kapoeta North to dry season pastures in Budi County – alongside instances of banditry and cattle raiding allegedly involving the Toposa of Kapoeta North and neighbouring groups such as the Didinga and Buya/Larim (mostly from Budi County) – have placed strains on relations between ethnic groups in the Greater Kapoeta area (UNDP 2020), and occur in the backdrop of uneven relations between the Toposa and their northern Murle neighbours from Pibor County (Rands and LeRiche 2012: p.8; Felix da Costa 2016: p.166). These conflicts have been exacerbated by the high presence of arms among community members. Efforts have been made in recent years to rekindle more positive relations between the Toposa and Buya/Larim, building on traditions of cooperation and inter-marriage between the groups (UNPK 2019).
Kapoeta North County largely avoided the large-scale fighting between SPLA and SPLA-IO following the outbreak of conflict in December 2013. Despite this, the county has been struggling economically due to the overall deterioration of the economy since the outbreak of the national conflict. For example, in March 2015 prisoners in Rwotho rioted due to lack of food, with seven inmates killed in the subsequent confrontation with authorities. UNMISS determined that the contractor had stopped delivering food to the prison due to lack of payment.
Reported clashes and cattle raids between the Toposa and Didinga (mostly from Budi County) were observed in the area as late as December 2019. Additionally, a series of revenge killings involving the Toposa and Buya/Larim communities escalated in mid-2019. This led to a peace and reconciliation dialogue facilitated by the South Sudan Council of Churches in December 2019 that resulted in an agreement with local government as a guarantor. However, despite an initial improvement in relations, conflict and revenge killings resumed between the two communities (UNMISS 2021). Conflict involving parts of the Toposa, Buya/Larim, and Didinga communities is discussed further in the profile for Budi County.
Cattle raiding has also been reported within the Toposa community (Radio Tamazuj 2021). In July 2022, particularly serious incidents were reported after suspected Murle armed youth clashed with Toposa in Chumakori and Najie payams of Kapoeta North. There has not been any independent verification of the number of casualties: upper estimates provided by the Kapoeta North County Commissioner stated that 235 people were killed (Eye Radio 2022), whilst over 15,000 head of cattle were reportedly stolen (UNMISS 2022). However, local sources have suggested there is uncertainty regarding the lethality of the violence, and indicated that reports of casualties may have been inflated in a bid to secure aid. Several months after the raids, authorities from the southern Boma area of the Greater Pibor Administrative Area proposed peace talks with their counterparts in Kapoeta North (Radio Tamazuj 2022). Finally, in July 2023, fighting was also reported between local militia following the discovery of a new mining site in the county, with at least 10 people killed during the clash (Voice of America 2023).
ADMINISTRATION & LOGISTICS
Payams: Chumakori, Karukomuge, Lomeyen, Mosingo, Najie, Paringa.
Alternative list of payams provided by local actors: Rwotho (County Headquarters)
UN OCHA 2020 map of Kapoeta North County: https://reliefweb.int/map/south-sudan/south-sudan-kapoeta-north-county-reference-map-march-2020
Roads:
- A tertiary road runs in a horseshoe shape at the very south of the county. The road begins in Kapoeta town (in Kapoeta South County), and ends at a junction in northern Budi County. The condition of the road is unknown.
UNHAS-recognised Heli and Fixed-Wing Airplane Airstrips: None
REFERENCES
Eye Radio. (2022). Cattle raid death toll in Kapoeta North rises to 235. Retrieved 22 August 2023
FAO/WFP. (2023). Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to South Sudan. Retrieved 31 July 2023. See equivalent versions of the CFSAM report online for data from previous years.
Felix da Costa, D. (2016). ‘This word, it is for Murle, not meant for other people’: The politics of Murle identity, experiences of violence and of the state in Boma, South Sudan. Doctoral thesis, SOAS.
FEWSNET. (2018). Livelihoods Zone Map and Descriptions for the Republic of South Sudan (Updated). Retrieved 10 July 2023.
OCHA. (2021). Humanitarian Needs Overview: South Sudan 2021. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
Radio Tamazuj. (2021). Stolen cattle recovered, handed to owners in Kapoeta North. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
Radio Tamazuj. (2022). GPAA’s Murle demand peace talks with neighboring Toposa. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
Rands, R. and LeRiche, M. (2012). Security responses in Jonglei State in the aftermath of inter-ethnic violence. Saferworld. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
UNICEF. (2017). 21 July – 31 August 2017: South Sudan Sitrep #112. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
UNDP. (2020). Greater Kapoeta Conflict and Gender Assessment. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
UNMISS. (2021). Women rally to support amendment of peace resolutions to reconcile youth of Toposa and Buya. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
UNMISS. (2022). UNMISS and state government conduct fact-finding mission to troubled Kapoeta North. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
UNPK. (2019). Kapoeta’s Toposa and Buya communities make another push for peace. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
Voice of America. (2023). South Sudan in Focus, 4 August 2023. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
REPORTS on KAPOETA NORTH
UNDP. (2020). Greater Kapoeta Conflict and Gender Assessment. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
* Note: The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Population Estimation Survey (PES) was published in April 2023 based on data collected in May-June 2021. This uses a different method to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Population Working Group (PWG) figures produced based on a combination of 2008 census data and population movement data up to 2022. The large discrepancies are primarily attributable to these different methods rather than changes in the actual population numbers over time and have been disputed by some civil society and analysts. Although the later PWG figures were produced more recently for the HNO 2023, at the request of the Government of South Sudan the data and method used by the PES is being used as the basis for the Common Operational Dataset (COD) for the UN system for the HNO 2024 and likely beyond. For further detail on this and other sources used in the county profiles, see the accompanying Methodological Note.