South Sudan, Statebuilding and Peacebuilding in a Faltering Liberal Order

• In Event: Statebuilding

Abstract

Roland Paris aptly argued that: “At best the liberal internationalist approach to peacebuilding has generated unforeseen problems. At worst, peacebuilding missions have had the ‘perverse effect’ of undermining the very peace they were meant to buttress.” In South Sudan, we have seen peace and state-building efforts reinforce the very conflicts they were intended to resolve.

The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was supposed to end Africa’s longest-running conflict. Instead, Sudan was eventually cleaved in two, birthing the world’s newest state and another civil war.

South Sudan was celebrating the revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) on the 31st of October, as the dignitaries were shaking hands people in the community of Duk not too far to the north were burying the dead of a raid and ensuing battle, similarly in the oil-rich border region of Northern Liech state groups from two opposition factions were engaged in fighting. It has been a common news article that just as an agreement is signed there is a violation or battle of some kind that draws it into question.

Liberal doctrines such as the responsibility to prevent and protect, have faced a deep challenge in South Sudan. Specific peacebuilding approaches have become woven into the fabric of continuing conflict, including DDR and armed group integration. The use of sanctions, arms embargoes, and other key peacebuilding measures have had little consequence. If building peace in South Sudan was a test of the liberal internationalist order, prospects are bleak.

Author

• Matthew LeRiche, Ohio University