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.
The paper reflects on the practice of good governance in South Sudan, focusing in particular on the forces hindering the fight against corruption in the country. Through data collection, the paper identifies the most common manifestations of corruption in South Sudan society as embezzlement, tribalism, and bribery, which thrive in the context of weak law enforcement system and economic catastrophe. Beyond its analysis, the paper provides recommendations for different stakeholders in the fight against corruption,…
Analysing South Sudan’s politics of taxation from 1899 to 2023, this article argues that the ethos of taxation in the region has been and remains primarily oriented around predatory and coercive strategies of rule. Patterns of taxation and their origin are presented by considering taxation practices in colonial, post-colonial rebel-led, and independent South Sudan, to showcase how these practices continued to be yielded as a technology of rule, of coercion, and to fulfill the interests…
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 meta-analysis offers an overview of the literature on governance in South Sudan in the CSRF repository by exploring salient and timely questions for donor-funded programming. These questions focus on the reason why local governance structures differ in South Sudan and the implications for aid actors; the relations between national, state, and local governance institutions and the implications for state building endeavours; the impacts of conflict and food security induced displacement on governance 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…
This article discusses the cycle of violence and ways to address it in South Sudan. The article finds that the elites’ ownership of cattle is one of the main drivers of guns proliferation and cycles of violence, with the elite using cattle migration as a means for land grab. To address this elite-driven cycle of violence, the article shares some lessons from other contexts that may be helpful in addressing these challenges in South Sudan….
Severe humanitarian needs and rising violence has spurred widespread displacement of South Sudanese refugees from Ethiopia into South Sudan. Many of those displaced intend to remain in South Sudan and require support to reintegrate. Needs in areas of return are high, and outcomes are likely to worsen with the onset of rains, particularly for those unable to access humanitarian assistance. The report discusses the needs and motivations of those returning from Gambella region of Ethiopia…
With the next general elections set to take place in December 2024, this Review aims to tackle crucial questions around the delineation of new geographical constituencies in line with the recently passed South Sudan’s National Elections Act, 2023. The Review analyses the constituency threshold formula proposed by in the Act and uses the suggested calculation guidelines to construct the possible scenarios for the distribution of geographical constituencies, as well as considering the challenges that come…
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