South Sudan: What Is Really Standing in the Way of Lasting Peace?

On 16 December last year, fighting erupted within the presidential guard of South Sudan. President Salva Kiir quickly classified this as an attempted coup by former vice-president Riek Machar, who had been dismissed just a few months earlier. Machar denied responsibility and the conflict rapidly spread from the capital of Juba to other states, including Jonglei.

The crisis, which started as a political issue, has since taken on ethnic undertones between the Dinka and Nuer communities.

This has highlighted a number of longstanding grievances in the country. Both sides have undertaken mass atrocities and the United Nations (UN) has reported killings, arbitrary detention, forced disappearances, sexual violence and widespread destruction of property during the conflict.

Thousands have been killed, with an estimated 70 000 people seeking protection at UN camps and 30 000 in the two UN compounds in Juba alone.

The response of the international community has been largely one of surprise. Closer examination, however, reveals fundamental flaws in many of their peacebuilding strategies.

In a 1992 report named 'An Agenda for Peace,' the UN defines peacebuilding as 'actions to identify and support structures to solidify peace and avoid a relapse to conflict.'

This view, which remains the core of peacebuilding interventions even today, assumes that if the right kind of state can be created (most times democratic), this will contribute towards stability.

Yet this fundamentally ignores problems associated with statehood in most parts of Africa, such as the politics of power and ethnicity that are currently manifesting in South Sudan. These problems need to be overcome if lasting peace is to be achieved.

The fact that peacebuilding and state-building are closely connected and mutually reinforcing cannot be disputed; indeed, peace is more likely and sustainable if states function well and serve their citizens.

Such a state is more likely to provide public goods that their citizens rightly expect of them when they operate under peaceful conditions. However, this nexus is not as easy to reach in fragile states.