Sudanese Civil Research Articles

Talisman Energy and the Second Sudanese Civil War

Holding corporations accountable for complicity in international crimes is especially difficult, due to lacking international legal guidelines and the fact that corporations do not become complicit for the same reasons that perpetrators commit crimes. The oil company Talisman Energy has been praised for its 2003 divestment from Sudan, but the corporation was never held accountable for its involvement in the second Sudanese civil war and victims were not compensated. This paper analyzes the Talisman Energy case through the lens of the International Commission of Jurists’ framework for corporate complicity, and illustrates the advantages of an adaptable knowledge and foresight threshold complemented by measures of causality and proximity. Adopting a holistic framework like this in legal provisions may prevent wrongful acquittals in the future and contribute to transitional justice for the victims of international crimes. While there is more work to do to design the appropriate legal provisions, this exploratory study recommends three fields of action: a broader awareness of the corporate accountability gap; a consideration of corporate accountability in transitional justice programs; and further research on the overlap between corporate accountability and transitional justice.

Analisis Kegagalan Consociational Approach dalam Perjanjian Naivasha Sudan

The Second Sudanese Civil War was a conflict between the Sudanese government and a separatist group from South Sudan, namely the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). It was the most prolonged violent conflict in African history (1983-2005). The conflict officially ended after the signing of the Naivasha Agreement in 2005. In this agreement, there was an effort to resolve the conflict with a consociational approach that carried out project sharing between the conflicting parties. However, this agreement did not succeed in making Sudan free from conflict. This article will present an analysis of the failure to implement the consociational approach in creating positive peace in Sudan and South Sudan The findings of this research are that the power-sharing carried out in this agreement only involves elites. Apart from that, the distribution of resources other than oil has yet to be carried out, which should also be divided, taking into account identity factors.

Interests of IGAD Member States in the South Sudan Peace Process, 2013- 2023

Three civil wars have been witnessed in South Sudan. The first Sudanese Civil war began in 1955 pitting troops from the Central government of Sudan and the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM) rebels. This war ended after the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972. The second war began in 1983 and ended in 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between. A referendum in 2011 overwhelmingly voted for the independent state of South Sudan. Two years (2013) after the birth of the South Sudan nation a third civil war erupted. The civil war pitted former Vice-President Dr Riek Machar against the government of President Salva Kirr of South Sudan. The humanitarian crisis and abuse of human rights associated with the civil conflict prompted the international community through regional powers to intervene and restore stability in South Sudan. The war in South Sudan has persisted despite the efforts by IGAD and other players in the peace process. This study this study examines the interests of IGAD member states in the South Sudan peace process between 2013 and 2023. Anchored on the realism theory of international relations this study argued that interests of IGAD member states has tended to slow down the peace process in South Sudan between 2013 and 2023. This study 1takes the form of an explanatory research1design. Purposive and snow balling sampling techniques were used to identify 410 respondents for field interviews. The study purposively identified 385 South Sudanese refugees in Nairobi. A total of 25 other respondents who included; representatives of the warring factions in South Sudan residing in Kenya, IGAD officials, EAC officials and Diplomats from IGAD member states were also interviewed. This study noted that in as much as different players have significantly contributed to the peace process; interveners’ interests have tended to slow down the peace process in South Sudan.

Peace Education: More than a utopic pedagogy?

The long list of wars reflects the dire need for a new violence prevention concept for addressing various ongoing conflicts and wars, including the war in Ukraine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Sudanese civil war, political instability in Afghanistan and Lebanon, and the North Korean crisis. One question emerges; can peace be learned? This study addresses this question by questioning 95 respondents from diverse professional backgrounds worldwide as it attempts to learn what they think about peace education, what experiences they have in this regard, and what suggestions they may have for improving the delivery of peace-building programs at educational institutions. This study found that the majority of respondents welcomed the peace education approach although they have very different understandings of peace education.

Berger, Carol. 2022. The Child Soldiers of Africa’s Red Army: The Role of Social Process and Routinised Violence in South Sudan’s Military. London: Routledge. 225 pp., index, bibliography. ISBN: 9780367742607

Erratum for hard copy: On page 105 the year of the internal South Sudanese civil war should be 2013, not 1913.

Political Reflections on the Sudanese Civil War 2023: A Qualitative Study

Political Reflections on the Sudanese Civil War 2023: A Qualitative Study

HOW THÖŊ PINY BECAME JUBA NA BARI: Naming and Place‐Making in Urban South Sudan

AbstractFollowing South Sudan's independence in 2011, a myriad of local, regional and global actors have flocked to its capital city, Juba, to influence and benefit from the ongoing state‐making process. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Juba between 2012 and 2015, this article demonstrates how urban ‘space’ in Juba is rendered into ‘place’ through everyday practices of naming that articulate urbanites’ contrasting experiences of the Sudanese civil wars, the city's tumultuous history, and their position within its—and the new nation's—present and future. This is most visible in a growing and contested Juba neighborhood that has come to be called by two different names, each tied to distinct experiences of conflict and displacement within and beyond the city. These and other namings and place‐makings index historically‐rooted ethno‐spatial understandings of South Sudan, memories of violence, and the sense of differential access to the city's economic potential in the face of ongoing upheaval. Urban naming and place‐making in Juba (and in other cities similarly impacted by conflict), it is argued, is a central domain through which urbanites disrupt official mappings and mitigate disorienting violence. These discursive practices are a vital means by which people forge stable lives and productive futures in the face of a precarious political present.

Leadership, nation-building and war in South Sudan: the problems of statehood and collective will

Leadership, nation-building and war in South Sudan explores the historical contradictions in the foundation of the South Sudanese state as well as the country's future prospects. The book is based on fieldwork research that the author conducted between 2015 and 2018. With a historical approach, Sonja Theron seeks to explain why ‘South Sudan has not known peace since 1955’ (p. 15). Here, the author is alluding to the reigniting of old political feuds, including the outbreak of the civil war in 2013. Theron revisits the history of conquests, slave trade and the Islamic sentiments that propelled the Mahdist revolt of the late 1880s, which she places in the context of the push for independence, which lasted from 1821 until the outbreak of the Sudanese civil war in 1955. With the support of Christian missionaries and the Anya Nya liberation movement in the 1960s, a South Sudanese political consciousness flourished. The book also illustrates how the shaky foundation of the postcolonial state triggered the emergence of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in 1983, with a broad-based alliance against marginalization. Three decades later, the SPLM invoked the right to self-determination for South Sudan's independence in 2011. Crucially, Theron points to the peace agreements that the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediated between 2002 and 2018, and their failure to address the root causes of the conflict. According to the author, IGAD sought to accommodate the political priorities of different factions, which allowed them to continue plundering the state and which ultimately worsened the country's underdevelopment and political fragility.

The “Repatriation” of South Sudanese from Uganda after the Second Sudanese Civil War: The Case of the Kuku People

The “Repatriation” of South Sudanese from Uganda after the Second Sudanese Civil War: The Case of the Kuku People

Investigating the ‘curious’ case of civil war and foreign direct investment: evidence from Sudan

It is typically argued that civil war acutely inhibits inward flows of foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the evidence is inconsistent and does not support the assumed negative relationship between civil war and FDI. Some studies suggest that FDI enters countries with internal armed conflicts unabated; others show that civil war economies exhibit strong increases in FDI during conflict. Underpinned by a liberal interpretation of war, this scholarship finds these trends to be surprising, counter-intuitive and curious, arguing that FDI enters conflict zones in spite of violence. In contrast, critical perspectives can provide insights by acknowledging that violence can facilitate economic processes such as FDI, creating a particular form of security and stability that can be conducive to FDI inflows. This article examines the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005), a country which exhibited strong increases in FDI during phases of the conflict. It is argued that particular types of violence perpetrated by the government’s armed forces and pro-government militias – groups which were sympathetic to the interests of key investors in the oil industry – facilitated FDI in Sudan’s oil sector during the 2000s to the detriment of large sections of the civilian population affected by the violence.

A Generation of Mysteries?

Abstract The history and the conflicts in which Sudanese Government armed forces have been involved are of interest both from the Sudanese historical and the military-historical angles. But while the agonies of Sudan’s civil wars have attracted significant academic interest, the structures, characteristics, and operating methods of official military institutions in Africa have been neglected, and there is little recent research. Sudanese military intervention in politics, including five successful coups, has been discussed since Ruth First’s book in 1970 and before. There were at least 16 coups and attempted coups by the Sudanese Armed Forces from 1957 to 1976. But there is little coverage of the security forces, and there is little available to cover the Sudanese army’s more specifically military record. Thus it is worthwhile to draw the available scattered threads together to start to form a basis for further research. The Sudanese Armed Forces’ frequent political involvement will be signposted and wound in as necessary—ultimately armies are a function of their governments—but is not the function of this article. What emerges is scattered fragments on military forces and operations, overlaid on the unrelenting drumbeat of horrible details from the first Sudanese civil war.

Given Names and Lived Closeness

Immediately after the independence of South Sudan in 2011, a nationality law was passed that defined citizenship by membership to clearly defined and bounded ethnic groups. To acquire citizenship, the testimony of a ‘next of kin’, taken to be an ‘older blood relative from the father’s line’, was supposed to verify ethnicity and, thus, belonging to the new nation. Citizenship offices were tasked with checking names and assessing life histories. In so doing, they combined the logic of patrilineal names with estimations of lived closeness, creating a complex system of measuring kinship. Based on colonial legacies and methods acquired during the Sudanese civil war, kinship measurements produced new relations, but also fueled ethnic tensions and cemented social inequalities.

War and genocide in South Sudan

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...

Trade, conflict and informality: Evidence from the South Sudanese civil war

AbstractA significant proportion of trade in Africa takes place informally. In this paper we postulate that informal trade is more sensitive to securityrelated trade costs than formal trade. To test this hypothesis, we combine unique aggregated survey data on Uganda's informal crossborder trade with formal customs data and exploit the spatial and time variation of the South Sudanese civil war to causally identify the impact of conflict on different types of trade. Our preferred estimates suggest that the civil war reduced Uganda's informal exports to South Sudan by as much as 80%, compared to an estimated effect of 12% for formal exports. Further, we show that the impact of the conflict on formal exports is driven entirely by a reduction of industrial goods exports while exports of agricultural products continued to flow, presumably reflecting necessities in consumption for which willingness to pay is high. Taken together our results are consistent with the hypothesis that security‐related trade costs have heterogeneous effects on different types of international trade.

موقف القانون السوداني من الوسائل الفنية لقواعد الإسناد دراسة قانونية تحليلية مقارنة

Abstract The importance of this research lies in the increasing multiplicity of private law topics. Therefore, the aim of the research is to: Identify the technical means for the rules of attribution, to know the reasons for the emergence of technical means, to highlight the adaptation of those rules in light of Sudanese law. The researcher seeks to follow the inductive analytical descriptive historical method. The research reached many conclusions and recommendations, the most important of which are: Sudanese law dealt with the issue of adaptation explicitly by adopting Bartan theory by subjecting conditioning to the judge’s law like other laws of Arab countries (Article 10) of the Sudanese Civil Transactions Law. The referral process as a technical process means that the rules of attribution in the applicable law in turn refer the judgment to another law. This law may be the law of the court that initially referred to the same law (apostasy process) or it is the law of another country, and there are a number of countries that refuse to take Referring to the Sudanese, Egyptian, Iraqi and Italian laws, Sudanese law explicitly addressed the issue of delegation, namely Article 15 of the Transactions Law. The research recommended the following: We hope that the legislator will review the laws pertaining to the rules of attribution periodically, not to take into account the exception made by (Bartan) with regard to the conditioning of things whether they are real estate or movable. If this last law does not take a referral.

The ambiguities of self‐determination: IGAD and the secession of South Sudan

AbstractThis paper examines the 1994 Declaration of Principles (DoP) for the resolution of the Sudanese civil war, adopted by the Inter‐Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). This was the only occasion on which an African inter‐state organization included separation as an option for resolving a civil war. It was the basis for South Sudan's independence in 2011. The DoP was drafted by the Ethiopian government, and imposed on belligerent parties, both of which were, at the time, unionist. The paper identifies two concepts of self‐determination within the DoP— independence for colonial territories and the Marxist‐Leninist idea of self‐determination for national groups. The rationale for including both arose from Ethiopian leadership within IGAD. The paper also examines the diverse Sudanese debates on self‐determination, including several strands of nationalism, Islamism, and the ‘New Sudan’ of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). There was radical disagreement among Sudanese on national identity and self‐determination, creating ambiguities that ironically facilitated the exercise in southern self‐determination in 2011. Drawing on documentation of Sudanese negotiations, the paper examines how the DoP unlocked the Sudanese debate on the issue, and how the different concepts fared up to the time of the independence of South Sudan.

The problem of the missing dead

This article examines what scholars can learn about civilian killings from newswire data in situations of non-random missingness. It contributes to this understanding by offering a unique view of the data-generation process in the South Sudanese civil war. Drawing on 40 hours of interviews with 32 human rights advocates, humanitarian workers, and journalists who produce ACLED and UCDP-GED’s source data, the article illustrates how non-random missingness leads to biases of inconsistent magnitude and direction. The article finds that newswire data for contexts like South Sudan suffer from a self-fulfilling narrative bias, where journalists select stories and human rights investigators target incidents that conform to international views of what a conflict is about. This is compounded by the way agencies allocate resources to monitor specific locations and types of violence to fit strategic priorities. These biases have two implications: first, in the most volatile conflicts, point estimates about violence using newswire data may be impossible, and most claims of precision may be false; secondly, body counts reveal little if divorced from circumstance. The article presents a challenge to political methodologists by asking whether social scientists can build better cross-national fatality measures given the biases inherent in the data-generation process.

“Lord Come to Our Aid”: Islamisation, Civil War, and the Pastoral Letters of the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference

During the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005), the Sudanese government attempted to fashion the country as an Islamic state. The Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SCBC) penned a series of letters condemning the lack of religious freedom, making demands of the state, and encouraging the laity with particular biblical references. The letters occasionally framed the war as a chance to prove a familial relationship with Christ, suggesting a compelling link between citizenship and faith. This article explores these letters and argues that they represent an important chapter in the genealogy of Sudanese church–state relations. Ongoing challenges with religious freedom in Sudan and South Sudan show the continuing relevance of earlier church discourse towards and about the state.

The South Sudan Conflict: Continentalan and International Implications

The South Sudan conflict which started in December 2013 is now entering its second year with continental and international implications far beyond comprehension in terms of human tragedy in one of the world’s newest nations. Continued fi ghting between the government troops and the rebel forces has displaced more than 1 000 000 and killed over 10 0000 people while a humanitarian crisis threatens many more South Sudanese and their neighbouring states. The war risks tearing the country apart as well as creating a potential humanitarian crisis of epic proportions on neighbouring states. Hence, this article examines the continental and international implications of the current South Sudanese confl ict which has roped in the African Union spearheaded by the Inter-Governmental Organization and the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. It argues that the heart of this post-independence conflict in South Sudan is the personal rivalry between President Salva Kiir and his former Vice President Riek Machar. This study attempts to provide a detailed outline of the South Sudanese civil confl ict by conducting an in-depth investigation of secondary data as well as interviews with military peacekeepers imbued with experience on the ground in South Sudan. To address the conflict, this paper suggests that the international community and the country’s leadership need to focus on resolving this personality-driven rivalry to pave way for sustainable peace in the country

Conflict-induced displacement as a catalyst for agricultural innovation: Findings from South Sudan

This article explores how conflict-induced displacement influences agricultural innovation processes and systems, and its implications after the return home or permanent resettlement of smallholder farmers. Results show that high rates of agricultural innovation occurred during displacement in the Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005), many of which were maintained afterwards. Respondents cited the need for adaptation to new social and physical circumstances, changed gender roles, and enhanced inter-household communication as contributing to increased opportunities for knowledge exchange, trade, and importantly, the development of new networks, modes of organisation and social norms. Furthermore, returnees to South Sudan have embodied these changes together with new values, habits and expectations. New linkages continued across borders between returnees and non-returnees, facilitating knowledge exchange and access to resources, markets and sources of ideas. A high degree of autonomous innovation capacity was also evident. Further research is required on the dynamics and processes associated with innovation in conflict-induced displacement. It is important for policy makers to encourage approaches that seek to actively tap into and build on the institutional, human and social capital built during displacement.