This CSRF study explores the disconnect between local, South Sudanese conceptions of accountability and the international, formalised Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP)  framework. In South Sudan, ‘accountability’ is based on reciprocity, in which an individual or group provides support to another, in the expectation that the recipient will reciprocate their support at a later date. Aid accountability mechanisms on the other hand, focus on power exercised through hierarchies; recognising, and at times actively seeking to challenge, existing power inequalities which can perpetuate the exclusion, or preferential treatment of individuals based on ethnicity, class, gender or other factors.

This study helps to remedy this disconnect by enhancing our understanding of accountability within South Sudan’s social and governance systems, by focusing on accountability system within the Murle and Lou Nuer communities and provides recommendations on how the aid community in South Sudan can make its accountability system and processes more accessible to, and understandable by, the South Sudanese on their own terms.

This study seeks to deepen the humanitarian aid communities’ understanding of accountability within South Sudan’s social and governance systems, by focusing on accountability system within the Murle and Lou Nuer communities and provides recommendations on how the humanitarian aid community in South Sudan can make its accountability system and processes more accessible to, and understandable by, the South Sudanese on their own terms.