ABSTRACT This article attempts to position education not only in the peacebuilding debate but also in the larger good governance debate about what makes a resilient social contract. We subscribe in this paper to a theoretical perspective that attributes the driver of civil wars to governance deficit that is manifested in absence of resilient social contract in terms of sustained agreement between citizens and state. We then ask the key question of whether and how…

There is a demonstrated relationship between early marriage and education. Female youth who are out of school are more likely to marry, and those youth who marry while in school, are more likely to drop out. By analyzing the stories of 140 female youth displaced by conflict in South Sudan and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), we examine the role of marital status and motherhood on schooling experience and educational interruption, attainment, and aspirations….

Until the latter part of the twentieth century, South Sudanese boys and girls grew food on household farms for their families to eat. Under this system, children’s work and education were hard to distinguish. Today, however, many boys and girls work for money outside of their household farm and use the money to support their education in schools. Child Labour, Education and Commodification in South Sudan examines why this change took place and the effect…

This article examines the provision of basic education services after the end of the Second Sudanese Civil War in 2005, focusing on the condition of the services and its implications for national cohesion during the period after the birth of the South Sudanese state. It argues that the way basic education services were provided after the Second Sudanese Civil War has contributed to the trajectory of inequality that characterised the period before the onset of…

Despite civil war and economic crisis, the educational sector in South Sudan has made tentative gains since 2011. This paper explores the everyday governance of schools in South Sudan, and the struggles of teachers to deliver education amid violence and predation and with scarce resources. The paper presents an analysis of policy data on education coupled with the insights of researchers and teachers from seven locations in South Sudan, drawing on interviews and a dialogue…

Throughout Sudan’s, and later South Sudan’s history, education has been used by successive governments to shape an official national identity and to promulgate an accepted concept of citizenship. One way education systems do this is through formal curricula, which aim to inculcate particular values and skills into the student body. This paper explores how the concept of “civicness” appears across the subject areas of History, Geography, and Citizenship in South Sudan’s national curriculum, launched in…

This report is part of the collection of publications on “Education, Conflict and Civicness in South Sudan”, which is the outcome of a collaboration between the South Sudan Studies Association (SSSA) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). We attempt in this paper to locate education not only in the peacebuilding debate, but also in the larger good governance debate about what makes a resilient social contract. In this paper we subscribe…

This report is part of the collection of publications on “Education, Conflict and Civicness in South Sudan”, which is the outcome of a collaboration between the South Sudan Studies Association (SSSA) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). South Sudan’s independence in 2011 reopened the debate about the use of indigenous languages as media of instruction at the early stages of schooling, which has intensified among African countries formerly under colonial rule….

Abstract: South Sudan was embroiled in a civil war from mid-December 2013 to mid-September 2018. Nearly 400,000 people died, and several million were displaced. The economy nearly collapsed as the nation’s output was severely reduced, causing inflation to soar. While prior research on the immediate humanitarian crisis in South Sudan has focused on forced displacement and food insecurity, there is little information available about the long-term impact the war had on human capital accumulation in…

Education is not only a human right. It is also tool for peacebuilding. In 2019, Reuben Garang conducted a feasibility study with South Sudanese refugee families living in refugee camps in Uganda. This project and report were fueled by Garang’s own personal experiences with periods of interrupted schooling both in refugee camps and in Canada. And it was fueled by the fundamental insight that education can serve as a tool for peacebuilding and mutual understanding…

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