The R-ARCSS was designed as an all-encompassing package of measures that would help end the civil war in South Sudan. Yet, in reality it does not efficiently address some of the root causes of the conflict. More than addressing those in a manner that connects both bottom-up and top-down drivers of tension, it focuses on elements of a power-sharing agreement and paves the way for resource sharing arrangements. This brief examines how and why grievances…

Abstract This paper takes a localized conflict over a non-demarcated stretch of the Uganda–South Sudan boundary in 2014 as a starting point for examining the history of territorial state formation on either side of this border since its colonial creation in 1914. It argues that the conflict was an outcome of the long-term constitution of local government territories as patches of the state, making the international border simultaneously a boundary of the local state. Some…

The Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) signed on 12 September 2018, not only allows for a new government and security arrangements, it also provides for two new commissions to decide the number of internal states and their boundaries. In the following Q and A, RVI fellows Douglas Johnson (DJ) and Aly Verjee (AV), joined by Matthew Pritchard (MP), US Institute of Peace researcher, discuss the history of boundary-making in…

This article argues, drawing on research in a Dinka-speaking part of South Sudan, that conflicts over local boundaries are rooted in the existence of different border paradigms and in subsequent attempts to resolve, sometimes violently, competing moral claims on the landscape. Link to publication

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