Abstract
On 9 July 2011, South Sudan became the 54th African state, following its secession from the Republic of Sudan. This ended decades of protracted civil war between the north and the south of Sudan. The secession took place after a referendum by the South Sudanese held on 9 January 2011, in accordance with the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The secession aimed at ushering hope and serving as springboard to durable peace in South Sudan. However, due to power struggles and factional battles within the governing South Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), ethnic-inspired armed conflict broke out resulting in a civil war between 2013 and 2016. The effect of the war was devastating, as it further created economic and humanitarian crisis.
In its quest for sustainable peace, the South Sudanese government, multiple internal and external actors have intervened through different means. This led to the signing of many agreements by the warring parties to end the war, including the September 2018 Revitalised Agreement and the establishment of the previous transitional governments, now Revitalised Government. But despite mediation efforts, peace continues to be elusive in South Sudan.
Because, many external actors involved the mediation process to advance economic interests at the expense of durable peace, they ensured the exclusion of critical CSOs and systematic rejection of their critical indigenous templates on peacebuilding and further impose western liberal peacebuilding templates, approaches and policy options on the Revitalised Government.
A viable option for durable peace in South Sudan, is for mediators to adopt adaptive mediation approach to enable effective inclusion and participation of the internal actors; to enable their historic indigenous peace templets to inform peace agreements. Therefore, the indigenous system of governance should be integrated into the modern
governance system so that current and future mediation could resonate with the socio-cultural realities of South Sudan.
Keywords: Peace, Peacebuilding, Civil War, Conflict Resolution, Mediation, Peace Agreements, and Revitalised Governments.