Protection through peacebuilding in South Sudan

ABSTRACT Protecting civilians has been the primary raison d’être of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) since civil war erupted in late 2013. Since then, UN efforts to protect vulnerable civilians have focused on a handful of so-called protection of civilians (PoC) sites. While they have unquestionably saved lives, the PoC sites have also absorbed the lion’s share of mission resources, severely limiting UNMISS’ ability to protect civilians elsewhere. The signing of the still-fragile Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) has enabled a reconsideration of the UNMISS protection mandate in light of what remains an uncertain transition. Given the systemic constraints on the UN’s ability to project force in the name of PoC, we argue that UNMISS’ most constructive and lasting contribution to both protection and peace in South Sudan will be through sustained investments in inclusive local-level peacebuilding. Re-orienting the PoC mandate along these lines offers an opportunity to at least partially counteract the decidedly exclusive nature of the country’s current peace process, and to support bottom-up conflict resolution processes that could eventually interact in constructive ways with top-down dynamics.