War and genocide in South Sudan

Abstract

This book investigates how state formation can occur through mechanisms of predatory ethno-nationalism and makes the case that a genocide was perpetrated in South Sudan between 2013 and 2017. Given the many foreign and domestic agendas at play in this period of South Sudan's history, this will make contentious reading for some. These years coincided with the beginning of the South Sudanese civil war. While it is broadly acknowledged that ethnic cleansing and other wartime atrocities were committed at this time—sometimes on a considerable scale—there is disagreement as to whether these crimes meet international definitions of genocide. As Pinaud dryly observes in her opening statement, ‘[t]he international community did not escalate its rhetoric to describe the violence in South Sudan as genocidal. This was at odds with the interpretation of most South Sudanese I interviewed’ (p. 2). Working with a definition (following Scott Strauss), of sustained violence at a scale...