Ecological stress and political coercion in the Sudan

This article outlines the impact of state intervention on ecological relations in the Sudan. The establishment of large-scale mechanised agricultural schemes; population and livestock concentration around water sources; and the evolution of large urban centres with high demands for firewood and charcoal have all contributed to ecological degradation. These effects have been coupled with the use of coercive measures to displace traditional farmers and pastoralists from their lands in favour of large-scale farming schemes. The objectives of government policy have suffered a double retreat – from development to crisis management and from crisis management to the bare maintenance of compliance and order. The inability of the state to intervene on behalf of the victims of drought and famine has led to the use of coercion as the only means to legitimise its hold on power.     

From Emergency to Social Security in Sudan - Part II: The Donor Response

In the first part of this article I examined the crisis of subsistence in Sudan resulting from the commercial development of the North and the war in the South. An attempt was also made to relate the deepening impoverishment that this represents to a decay in governance. There is a tendency amongst donor and government officials, which is reflected in the literature, to regard the unfolding crisis as the transitory result of exceptional circumstances rather than as irreversible and therefore warranting a major revaluation of policy. As a consequence, social security and emergency planning has generally been of an emergency type. In this, the final part of the article, I examine the donor response in more detail. In particular, I argue that the decay of governance is so extensive that a donor-led system of social security has been imposed on Sudan. This system has a number of characteristics, the most important of which is that it exists in the absence of the political renewal and democratisation that would be necessary for the technical solutions it advocates to be implemented. The result is that donor-led security, which is typical of the Horn of Africa, proceeds in a relation of antagonism to the sovereign power, a situation which significantly reduces the efficiency of the measures undertaken.     

Interrupting the balance: reconsidering the complexities of conflict in South Sudan

By the start of 2014, violent conflict had erupted across much of South Sudan following initial violence in Juba on 15 December 2013. The speed with which the fighting has spread raises questions regarding the impact of national‐level politics on violence at the local level. This article develops a framework in which violent conflict can be comprehended as a response to the interruption of the negotiation of the balance of power between groups; the negotiation is interrupted when that balance tips in favour of one group, such as through changes in the national political market or government reforms. The article provides two cases studies of attempts to strengthen the state that inadvertently interrupted local power relations between groups. In response, the groups engaged in violent conflict to reinstate a balance of power. Both examples involve conflict among Dinka groups from 2005 to 2008.     

Sub-regional integration in Sudan: the key to food security and recovery

The signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Sudan has created a new opportunity for peace. Approaches to food security must now be reoriented based on the agro-ecological diversity in Sudan. WFP is in a unique position to catalyse an approach to food security that meets immediate needs and contributes to long-term recovery, in collaboration with the Government of National Unity (GNU) and the Government of South Sudan (GOSS). Aggregate food production in Sudan has increased in the past decade. At sub-regional levels, however, many areas remain food insecure. Major research must be undertaken to identify optimum levels of food production and barriers to access to food at sub-regional levels as a first step towards linking deficit areas with areas of surplus. Initiatives must also be undertaken to facilitate increased integration between sub-regions. Increased sub-regional linkages could ensure more efficient delivery of food in the short term as well as recovery and economic growth in the long term.     

From emergency to social security in Sudan - part I: the problem

This is the first part of a two-part article which stresses the need to move away from short term emergency measures to a more general system of social security. A weakness in much of the thinking on food security in Sudan is its conception of a normally self-provisioning peasantry which is pushed into distress only as a consequence of exceptional external conditions. Food catastrophes are therefore seen as, essentially, temporary phenomena requiring emergency interventions. This article proposes a different view: that the commercial development of Sudan has engendered a crisis of subsistence synonymous with the collapse of indigenous support systems, the spread of absolute poverty and the erosion of the country's resource base. In the North this situation has come about through economic means and in the South through war. The spread of absolute poverty and the resulting vicious struggle for scarce resources cannot, however, be separated from the decay in governance. Part I of the article attempts to establish the interconnections between these elements and thereby to indicate the problems which a system of social security would have to overcome. Part II will examine the institutional consequences of the crisis, namely the imposition of a donor-led system of social security.     

Health sector recovery in early post‐conflict environments: experience from southern Sudan

Health sector recovery in post‐conflict settings presents an opportunity for reform: analysis of policy processes can provide useful lessons. 1 The case of southern Sudan is assessed through interviews, a literature review, and by drawing on the experience of former technical advisers to the Ministry of Health. In the immediate post‐conflict phase, the health system in southern Sudan was characterised by fragmentation, low coverage of health services, dismal health outcomes and limited government capacity. Health policy was extensively shaped by the interplay of context, actors and processes: the World Bank and the World Health Organization became the primary drivers of policy change. Lessons learned from the southern Sudan case include the need for: sustained investment in assessment and planning of recovery activities; building of procurement capacity early in the recovery process; support for funding instruments that can disburse resources rapidly; and streamlining the governance structures and procedures adopted by health recovery financing mechanisms and adapting them to the local context.     

An Examination of the 1990-91 Famine in Sudan

Shortly before and during the harvest of 1990, a series of warnings were issued by concerned international and UN agencies that Sudan would experience a very poor harvest followed by an acute food shortage over the period 1990-91. The 1990 harvest was estimated to be similar to that obtained in 1984. After the very poor harvest in 1984, Sudan experienced a major famine during which deaths may have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. There were fears that this experience might be repeated in 1990 - 91. By the time of the subsequent 1991 harvest, it was clear to all that a severe food crisis had been experienced. There were severe shortages of water and food and very high malnutrition rates of children were noted by UNICEF across a wide range of areas. Despite these adverse indications, starvation deaths were probably numbered in thousands, rather than hundreds of thousands. Famine mortality, which may include deaths from famine associated disease, was similarly low. The initial predictions, it now seems, may have over-estimated famine mortality almost one hundred times. Several potential explanations of the over-estimate are examined. These include prediction errors, government and donor responses to the drought such as food aid and immunization, and traditional community and household level coping strategies in times of food shortage.     

Capacity development for participatory disaster risk assessment

In this paper a large-scale community-based disaster risk-assessment project, undertaken in the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District Municipality in the North-West Province of South Africa, is evaluated. In contrast to other disaster risk management consultancy projects in South Africa, this project included a significant skills transfer component to the at-risk communities and local government officials. In this evaluation, the authors draw on their own experiences in implementing this and similar projects, a review of the project management documents is undertaken, and a focus group interview with facilitators involved in the project is used as a primary source. The discussion is further contextualised in terms of community-based disaster risk assessment theory and the existing literature on disaster risk assessment in South Africa. Logistical and data quality issues as well as staff turnover were found to be concerns during the project. From the findings, it is argued that the common practice of outsourcing disaster risk-management projects is not conducive to effective disaster risk management. Local government entities should take responsibility for disaster risk assessment as a continual activity. This is in contrast to the view currently manifesting in South Africa as a set of bureaucratic actions undertaken by consultants to achieve ‘legislative compliance’ for municipalities.     

A Tribute to Chris, Clare, Tommy and Louise Rolf and Sally Rockett

Member agencies of the British Refugee Council have been shocked by the murder of their colleagues and two of their children in Khartoum in May. But all have stressed the need to continue with the work which is so desperately needed to assist refugees not only in Sudan, but in the Horn of Africa and the rest of the continent.     

Living with transience in high-risk humanitarian spaces: the gendered experiences of international staff and policy implications for building resilience

Deployment in a crisis zone is a perilous undertaking. Little is known right now about how humanitarian workers relate social and professional goals to lived experiences of high-risk environments. In South Sudan, ranked as the most dangerous country globally for aid workers, 20 international humanitarian staff were interviewed to examine their sense of place, well-being, and vocation, using thematic and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Subjectivities of humanitarian space hinged upon negotiating physical hardships and social relationships: Juba, the capital, was described as a ‘prison’ and a ‘party hotspot’. For expatriate staff, making sense of spatial, social, and professional transience was sharply gendered and rooted in the subjectivities of risk-taking, crisis management, and career-building. Two policy measures are highlighted here to address the implications of transience for human well-being and organisational effectiveness. Efforts to support teams and structure work environments, altering the humanitarian and vocational bubble, will help to develop resilience at the heart of humanitarian systems.     

The promise of acceptance as an NGO security management approach

This paper explores three questions related to acceptance as a security management approach. Acceptance draws upon relationships with community members, authorities, belligerents and other stakeholders to provide consent for the presence and activities of a non‐governmental organisation (NGO), thereby reducing threats from these actors. Little is documented about how NGOs gain and maintain acceptance, how they assess and monitor the presence and degree of acceptance, or how they determine whether acceptance is effective in a particular context. Based on field research conducted in April 2011 in Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda, we address each of these three issues and argue that acceptance must be actively sought as both a programme and a security management strategy. In the paper we delineate elements common to all three contexts as well as missed opportunities, which identify areas that NGOs can and should address as part of an acceptance approach.     

依靠政府职能、科技进步、公众参与三者紧密结合,搞好大中城市地震应急工作

总结了在南黄海６．１级地震应急中的成功经验：本省及有关城市充分发挥防震减灾工作的政府职能，各级领导决策及时，指挥果断、地震专业科技人员尽心尽职，迅速判断震情，安抚民心以及新闻部门反应快，报道勤，收效好。并由此提出南黄海６．１级地震应急的３点体会和进一步做好大中城市地震应急工作的３点建议     

The Protection of Civilians and ethics of humanitarian governance: beyond intervention and resilience

The principle of the Protection of Civilians (PoC) in armed conflict has ethical repercussions in various actions undertaken by states and international organisations, from humanitarian relief, development aid, and peacekeeping, to warfare and military intervention. While the ethics of humanitarian intervention are instructive in this regard, most PoC practices should be conceived rather as modes of humanitarian governance across borders—from interventionist to resilience‐oriented kinds. The consequences of this for the ethics of PoC are explored in this paper, highlighting questions of power, culture, and complicity. By relating these questions to the ethical strands of solidarist and pluralist internationalism, it positions the ethics of PoC within the broader field of the ethics of world politics. Examples are drawn from recent scholarly debate on PoC efforts in war‐torn countries such as South Sudan. This analysis of the ethics of PoC reconfigures central positions in the debate on humanitarian intervention to an era of global humanitarian governance.     

Influencing resilience: the role of policy entrepreneurs in mainstreaming climate adaptation

One way to make development pathways more resilient in the face of a changing climate has been through mainstreaming adaptation into government policies, planning and sectoral decision‐making. To date, many of the transferable lessons have taken the form of technical approaches such as risk assessments and toolkits. This article instead draws on evidence from South Asia to emphasise some of the more tacit and informal approaches used to influence adaptation policy. Despite their apparent significance in policy processes, such tactics are often neither planned for nor well reported in resilience‐building projects and programme documents. Using evidence to populate a typology of influencing strategies, this article looks particularly at the role of policy entrepreneurs who navigate the political complexity of both formal and informal governance systems to promote successful adaptation mainstreaming. It concludes with recommendations for adaptation and resilience programming that can more effectively harness the breadth of influencing strategies.     

Information Exchange in the Disaster Zone: Interaction Between Aid Workers and Recipients in South Sudan

The author's experience of information collection and analysis in the Bahr-el-Ghazal region of south Sudan is reflected on here. The paper suggests that existing strategies of needs assessment are often based on misunderstandings about the cultural, social and economic conditions of war-affected communities. Furthermore, the needs assessment process has taken on a life of its own: for the intended beneficiaries it is often a wearying experience, but one which can yield benefits if the 'correct' answers are provided to sometimes ridiculous and often insensitive questions. For the assessors, participatory patterns of data collection provide an apparently scientific justification for decision-making in contexts characterised by complex political and moral dilemmas and organisational confusion.     

An Ethiopian refugee village in Sudan: the question of employment

Abstract— There are some 460,000 Eritrean and Tigrean political refugees in Sudan. The numbers have increased dramatically since the mid-1970s, and as yet there are no convincing signs of peace which would allow the prospect of a speedy return home. Sudan is thus faced with one of the Third World's largest populations of long term refugees, and the capacity of the economy to absorb such numbers into its labour force is an acute and potentially violent issue. Discussion and planning has been hindered by a lack of specific information on the proportion of refugees who are of urban or rural origin and the proportion of those who might undertake skilled or unskilled employment. The following report of a census and survey of a refugee village in eastern Sudan offers some insight into the problem and suggests steps towards its solution.     

Food Targeting in Darfur: Save the Children Fund's Programme in 1986*

Emergency food aid has usually, if at all, been targeted through feeding centres. In Darfur, Sudan, SCF targeted food aid to the population on the basis of comprehensive household data. The decision to use this approach was taken in 1986 following the failure of both feeding centres and general distribution to meet emergency needs in 1984/85. This report outlines the development of the food targeting system and the types of data used for making allocations. Further research is required in order to find solutions to questions raised by the experience, such as: How can NGOs and government authorities arrive at a definition of need which is acceptable to local government and donors?; What is the most practical method for implementing a targeted programme to a proportion of the population?; Should individuals be given assistance which will enable them to remain in non-productive areas?; and would direct market intervention, food for work, or cash distribution be a more effective and less disruptive form of emergency aid in famine areas?     

Mental health in South Sudan: a case for community‐based support

This paper² provides a snapshot of the mental health situation in South Sudan between 2013 and 2016, taking account of the personal reflections of both authors who were engaged in mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS)³ programming in the country at this time.⁴ It begins by presenting an overview of MHPSS activities from this period, including governmental and non‐governmental organisation (NGO) services, and relevant research and coordination mechanisms. It goes on to illustrate the challenges to the provision of support, as well as the overarching structural, governance, and human resource constraints faced by the sector. Finally, recommendations are put forward for improving services and care for people suffering from psychosocial and mental health issues, as well as suggestions for areas of focus in the future. The importance of an integrated, community‐based model is emphasised, and opportunities for organisations engaged in reconciliation efforts and mental health service provision to collaborate are proposed.     

Transitional coordination in Sudan (2006–08): lessons from the United Nations Resident Coordinator's Office

With the increase in internal conflicts following the end of the Cold War, the scale and scope of the United Nations' work in conflict and post‐conflict environments grew markedly. As a result, the coordination of programming and policy in the transition from relief to recovery has been a central preoccupation of academics and practitioners alike. Intergovernmental bodies such as the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) have made these topics a subject of regular discussion, while some countries have altered their bureaucratic structures to respond more effectively in post‐crisis settings, particularly in cases involving the deployment of national troops. The United Nations Resident Coordinator's Office in Sudan provides a model for other transitional countries and is a useful case study of the broader challenges of post‐crisis programming. Effective coordination structures and planning/programming processes are identified as interdependent prerequisites for ensuring a successful transition from relief to recovery.