This policy brief highlights the role that donor headquarters play in shaping the incentives and rules of the aid system, influencing implementing partner decisions, policies, and investments. It takes a deeper look at how some well-meaning policies can unexpectedly backfire, leading to new challenges, inefficiencies or in some cases, perpetuate conflict. To do so, it analyses five well-meaning policies common to many donors that can have unexpectedly negative results within conflict-affected countries, providing examples from…
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CSRF Research Repository
The CSRF Research Repository aims to support greater contextual knowledge for policy makers, programme managers, and implementers by providing a searchable repository of research, analysis, and resources, and providing periodic updates on new research and analysis.
This CSRF report focuses on the return and reintegration resulting from the current influx of returnees and refugees from Sudan and other neighbouring countries. Specifically, the report explores the risks associated with return and reintegration as well as opportunities for conflict sensitive reintegration and durable solutions initiatives. To inform the current approaches to returns and reintegration, the report highlights key lessons from past returns and reintegration experiences in South (ern) Sudan.
Women in South Sudan are subject to limited access to political, economic, social resources due to the country’s rigid patriarchal structure. Nevertheless, women have been negotiating their agency and influence for decades, playing a crucial role in state-building, peacebuilding, and development processes. Beyond their formal role as agents of peace, considering the informal dimensions through which South Sudanese women influence peace and conflict are vastly significant for aid actors to grasp conflict dynamics and the…
This paper aims to shed light on opportunities and challenges of the implementation of the humanitarian, development, and peace (HDP) nexus in South Sudan, and particularly investigating how localisation can be embedded in the HDP nexus in line with a decolonial perspective. This is achieved by identifying the origins of the HDP nexus in South Sudan as a top-down and largely state-centric effort, moving onto a problematisation of the localisation agenda both within UN-led implementations…
On the backdrop of the 1999 Wunlit Peace Conference, this briefing focuses on contentious issues in the Wunlit Triangle across Unity, Warrap, and Lakes States, as discussed by local communities. It also provides recommendation from participants on how communities can peacefully resolve disputes across boundaries. Read more here
This report aims at shedding a light on needs and perspective of local women in South Sudan in Bor and Malakal, as well as offering recommendations for aid actors. The report argues that despite the existence of several laws protecting their safety, women still feel insecure. This is partly due to the lack of enforcement of said laws, the entrenched cultural norms, and the struggle of women to claim their rights. Read more here
This SIPRI Policy Report synthesizes the data on small arms and light weapons (SALW) diversion from the United Nations Panel of Experts reports on the five UN arms embargoes in place in sub-Saharan Africa in 2022—on the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan (Darfur region). The report provides a typology on the sources of illicit SALW in the states and regions under embargo and discusses the challenges…
This report provides an assessment of South Sudanese’s perceptions of everyday safety for the period of 2018 to 2023, identifying an overall positive trend with differing views when broken down to genders, age groups, locations, and marital status. For instance, women in IDP camps have experience a worrying regression in their safety in 2022-2023. Conflict histories and prior exposure to violent events does not entirely account for the correlation between experiences of safety and marital…
This briefing provides field-based reflections and Conflict Sensitivity Lessons of the Partnership for Peace, Recovery and Resilience (PfPRR) in Rubkona, Leer & Mayendit, South Sudan. The reflections build on the CSRF’s accompaniment to PfPRR stakeholders in Rubkona/Bentiu and point at some key lessons learned, including the significance of the PFPRR as platform for collaboration, the importance of leadership at all levels, increased ownership by the involved agencies and that greater inclusiveness should be encouraged.
This paper reflects international actors’ prevalent and persistent assumptions about South Sudan and illustrates how these have shaped international engagement for the last two decades. Drawing on the eminent “aiding the peace” evaluation report of 2010 and recent developments in South Sudan, this paper offers relevant recommendations for policymakers and practitioners to identify solutions to present dilemmas.
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