The Price of South Sudan's Independence

2015 ◽  
Vol 114 (772) ◽  
pp. 194-196
Author(s):  
Alex de Waal
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Oil Wealth

Just a few years after becoming Africa's newest nation, South Sudan is embroiled in civil war and faces bankruptcy despite its ample oil wealth, thanks to a cynical scramble for the spoils of power.

South Sudan will get a larger budget but not reforms

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Financial Management ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Management Reform ◽  
Underdeveloped Countries ◽  
Public Financial Management ◽  
Real Change ◽  
Oil Wealth

Subject South Sudan's budget and reform outlook. Significance Relative to other underdeveloped countries, oil wealth has given South Sudan potential economic advantages. However, an entrenched system of financial patronage and embezzlement has persistently undermined official budget targets. Despite occasional promises, President Salva Kiir’s government has never made a firm priority of development or public financial management reform. It has not even made good on its pledge to allocate 100 million dollars to finance the 2018 peace agreement that nominally ended its five-year civil war. Impacts Significant public financial management reform will not happen until there is a real change of government, starting with Kiir. Major new oil investments will not materialise, despite some purported plans. External initiatives to improve public financial management will only have marginal impact.

On South Sudan, in English. Review of the Books by Peter Martell “First Raise A Flag: How South Sudan Won the Longest War but Lost the Peace” and John Young “South Sudan’s Civil War: Violence, Insurgency and Failed Peacemaking”

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-115
Author(s):  
Anna Sharova
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Civil War ◽  
English Language ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Graham Greene ◽  
The Future ◽  
Independent Country ◽  
Spot Analysis

Anna Sharova reviews two recent books separately published by two English language authors – P. Martell and J. Young. The books are very different in style and mood. While P. Martell presents an excellent example of British journalist prose in the style of his elder compatriots Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene, who did their reporting and writing from exotic countries during fateful periods of history, J. Young offers a more academic, though no less ‘on the spot’ analysis of the situation in the youngest independent country of Africa. J. Young’s considers two possible approaches to conflict resolution as possible outcomes: non-intervention cum continuation of the war, or the introduction of international governance. P. Martell comes up with a disappointing prediction about the future of South Sudan. The war will go on, the famine will return, and the threat of genocide will not disappear. People will continue to flee the country, and refugee camps will grow. New warring groups will appear, new murders will be committed. Neighbouring states will not stop competing for influence and resources. New peacekeepers will arrive. Warlords will be accused of crimes, but, as before, they will escape punishment, while some will be promoted.

Oil Wealth, Post-conflict Elections, and Postwar Peace Failure

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 1021-1045 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Keels
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Oil Revenue ◽  
Oil Wealth ◽  
New Research

New research has emerged that suggests there is a troubling relationship between elections and civil wars; primarily, elections increase the risk of civil war recurrence. I investigate this relationship further by examining the economic factors associated with the connection between postwar elections and peace failure. Specifically, how does the presence of oil wealth impact the risk posed by postwar elections. Drawing on previous findings in the democratization literature, I suggest the immobility of oil wealth dramatically increases the stakes associated with postwar elections. As postwar elites use irregular electioneering to consolidate their control of oil revenue, it increases the incentives for postwar opposition to use violence as a means to achieve their objectives. Using post-civil war data from 1945 to 2005, I demonstrate that postwar elections that occur in oil-rich economies dramatically decrease the durability of postwar peace. Once controlling for petro elections, though, I demonstrate that subsequent postwar elections actually increase the durability of postwar peace.

Rethinking the Conflict “Resource Curse”: How Oil Wealth Prevents Center-Seeking Civil Wars

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 727-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Paine
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Revenue Sources ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
The Government ◽  
Oil Wealth ◽  
Oil Revenues ◽  
Civil War Onset

AbstractA broad literature on how oil wealth affects civil war onset argues that oil production engenders violent contests to capture a valuable prize from vulnerable governments. By contrast, research linking oil wealth to durable authoritarian regimes argues that oil-rich governments deter societal challenges by strategically allocating enormous revenues to enhance military capacity and to provide patronage. This article presents a unified formal model that evaluates how these competing mechanisms affect overall incentives for center-seeking civil wars. The model yields two key implications. First, large oil-generated revenues strengthen the government and exert an overall effect that decreases center-seeking civil war propensity. Second, oil revenues are less effective at preventing center-seeking civil war relative to other revenue sources, which distinguishes overall and relative effects. Revised statistical results test overall rather than relative effects by omitting the conventional but posttreatment covariate of income per capita, and demonstrate a consistent negative association between oil wealth and center-seeking civil war onset.

South Sudan

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Giffen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
United Nations Peacekeeping ◽  
The Government ◽  
Do So

Two years and five months following the country’s independence from Sudan, a political crisis in South Sudan quickly devolved into a civil war marked by violence that could amount to atrocities. At the time, a United Nations peacekeeping operation, UNMISS, was the principal multinational intervention in South Sudan. UNMISS was explicitly mandated to assist the government of South Sudan to fulfil its responsibility to protect and was also authorized to protect civilians when the government was unable or unwilling to do so. Despite this role, UNMISS’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General said that no one could have predicted the scale or speed at which the violence unfolded. This chapter explores whether the atrocities could have been predicted by UNMISS, why UNMISS was unprepared, and what other peacekeeping operations can learn from UNMISS’s experience.

After Gaddafi

2019 ◽  
pp. 665-681
Author(s):  
Frederic Wehrey
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Armed Force ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Irregular Migration ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Oil Wealth

The course of the 2011 Libyan revolution, international intervention, and the regime’s application of armed force created new forms of sub-state affiliation and mobilization. International and regional intervention has exacerbated Libya’s chaos and deepened its fault lines. The civil war in 2014 was the culmination of these fissures and international pressures but conflicts since then by the myriad armed groups have become increasingly predatory—a scramble for the country’s oil wealth and the capture of state institutions. Libya’s conflicts are directly tied to the pathologies of the rentier oil state under Gaddafi and the failure of post-2011 distributive policies, along with endemic corruption and cronyism. Meanwhile, Western engagement is focused on parochial aims such as counterterrorism and stemming irregular migration. For the foreseeable future, Libya is likely to suffer from truncated sovereignty, a fractured national identity, regional meddling, simmering armed conflict, and hyper-localized politics.

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