In South Sudan, elite politics appears to be increasingly marketised in that loyalties are bought and sold through monetary transactions. Rebelling groups are persuaded to come back into government at a price. However, moneys and markets have long had complex, evolving social and political meanings. This project explored how the meanings of money in politics and to buy loyalties has changed over time, and how elites have sometimes struggled to control more popular meanings. This research was carried out by Naomi Pendle.

• Sudan's Political Marketplace in 2021, LSE Conflict Research Programme, May 2021, available in English and Arabic,

This project examines bottom-up perspectives on accountability for extreme hunger. 2017 saw the declaration of four famines around the world. It was clear that starvation had not ended. The United Nations and other actors at an international level started to explore the potential for international criminal culpability for those who caused starvation. These discussions highlight that starvation was often used as a method of war.  This research project investigates how extreme hunger has been understood in South Sudan overtime and during the 2017 period of famine. The research pays attention to local mechanisms used for redistributing food or for holding people accountable for the hunger of others, including local chiefs’ courts. In some areas, chiefs’ courts in the dry season suspend all other cases and only deal with those relating to hunger.  They are known as hunger courts.

The research is being led by the Bridge Network and Naomi Pendle.  The research includes court observations, oral history interviews, archival research and data from recent, large-scale surveys in South Sudan. 

Research outputs:

• Chiefs’ courts, hunger, and improving humanitarian programming in South Sudan, LSE Conflict Research Programme, March 2021.
• Accountability for famine: Learning from the chiefs’ courts in South Sudan, LSE Conflict Research Programme Blog, October 2018.

In December 2013, when fighting erupted across South Sudan, tens of thousands sought shelter in United Nations bases and their Protection of Civilian Sites.  Many people have not left these sites since 2013 and since, more have sought safety.  Hundreds of thousands still live on these bases.  Our research in Malakal, Wau, Bentiu and Juba is exploring how authority is changing and how violence is governed in these unusual spaces.  The research is being led by the Bridge Network, Naomi Pendle and Rachel Ibreck.  

Research outputs:

• The Future of Protection of Civilians Sites: Protecting displaced people after South Sudan’s peace deal, LSE Conflict Research Programme, February 2019. 

The last decades of South Sudan’s history have been dominated by violent conflict. And, the logics of politics in South Sudan have become increasingly inherently violent and turbulent. Despite this however, there remains numerous examples of more civic behaviour.  This project explores how education in South Sudan has created political and social spaces for more civic authority and actions. This also provides space to explore the very meaning of civicness in the context of South Sudan. We also consider alternative contexts when education has been used to wage war and cement more authoritarian leadership.

The project is being carried out by a broad collection of South Sudanese and international academics.  This cohort are conducting their own, small research projects that will be brought together in a special issue for a peer review journal.

The Sudans have experienced decades of violent conflict but also decades of attempts by actors to forge peace, including at the local level.  These peace agreements do not necessarily end conflict but can be an important part of reshaping power and remaking the rules of war and peace. This project looks at histories of local peace-making in South Sudan over time.  We do this through a collection of smaller research projects by a variety of researchers. 

This includes research on local peace agreements in Abyei by Martin Ochaya, research on local peace agreements in the Equatorias by Leben Moro, research on civil society’s role in IGAD negotiations on South Sudan by David Deng, and research on peace negotiations in Gogrial by Naomi Pendle and Wol Athuai.

International reports have condemned high levels of sexual and gender-based violence carried out during battles in South Sudan over recent years.  This research project looks at key historic moments in South Sudan that have evolved norms surrounding gender-based violence. This project is carried out by Professor Jok Madut Jok.  It revisits and updates his ethnographic work in the 1990s and reflects on changes over the last two decades.

This project looks at how different forms of non-state public authority, particularly those who have influence over the use of violence in their communities understand and interpret gender norms and practices, including practices of sexual violence. The project also considers how these understandings have, in turn, been influenced by the norms being promulgated through humanitarianism.  The research is being carried out by CRP Research Fellow Alicia Luedke.

Research outputs:

• Violence, crime and gender in South Sudan: reflections from the field on militias and gangs, LSE Conflict Research Programme, November 2020.
• The commodification of women and girls in South Sudan: increased risks and continued violence, LSE Conflict Research Programme Blog, April 2019.

Many South Sudanese have fled into exile to seek safety from the conflict in South Sudan. However, during exile, South Sudanese are often again confronted with various layers of violence. Despite this, many have found ways to find dignity for themselves and others. In this project, Rachel Ibreck explores how South Sudanese in exile in Egypt have created civic spaces and activities created to support each other’s’ struggles for dignity and survival.  

Research outputs:

• Rethinking humanitarian solidarity from the perspective of South Sudanese refugees facing discrimination and violence in Cairo, LSE Conflict Research Programme Blog, March 2020.

This project explores the historical legacy of tax practices by focusing on the way taxes were collected by rebel groups during South Sudan’s civil wars and whether related ideas about taxes continue to inform peoples' understandings of, and relationship to, the state in South Sudan.

This research is vital to policymakers and academics because it challenges conventional narratives about rebel taxation in conflict-affected states, which tend to assume that the primary function of direct taxes in these types of regions is revenue raising, whereas they are also likely to be uniquely informing ideas about the state. This research is being carried out by Matthew Benson.

• Land Governance and the Conflict in South Sudan, LSE Conflict Research Programme, October 2021.

• ‘Who is this Government Really?’: South Sudanese Perspectives on Taxes and Public Authority, LSE Conflict Research Programme Blog, May 2020.