Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 19:17:31 +0200
Civil Society and the South Sudan Crisis
By Jérôme Tubiana <http://blog.crisisgroup.org/authors/jerome-tubiana/>
16 July 2014
_____
The inclusion of civil society in efforts to
<http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/publication-type/alerts/2014/halting-south-su
dan-s-spreading-civil-war.aspx> defuse the South Sudan crisis has so far
been fraught. The parties to the conflict (see our recent report
<http://www.crisisgroup.org/%7E/media/Files/africa/horn-of-africa/south%20su
dan/217-south-sudan-a-civil-war-by-any-other-name.pdf> South Sudan: A Civil
War by Any Other Name) all have their own ideas about what civil society is;
and each party tends to believe the most legitimate civil-society
representatives are those that think just as it does. Most recently,
unresolved questions of what civil society is and what role it should play
helped cause <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article51444> the
suspension late last month of talks between the major warring parties.
The regional precedents are not encouraging. Darfur civil society came out
from the Doha process (2009-2011) considerably weakened by both internal
divisions and external manipulations. Lessons should be learned from both
this and the earlier (2002-2005) Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)
processes to avoid repeating similar mistakes.
How ‘civil’ is civil society?
In early June 2014, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) –
East Africa’s peace and security organisation – invited notionally
independent South Sudanese actors to a “multi-stakeholders symposium” meant
to initiate an inclusive phase of IGAD-led peace talks in Addis Ababa. The
symposium participants, including civil-society organisations, religious
groups, political parties and formerly detained political leaders, nominated
28 members (seven for each group) to represent wider South Sudanese
interests at the peace talks.
Those calling for civil-society inclusion in the talks hope unarmed South
Sudanese can bridge divisions among armed parties and local communities now
embroiled in a war that had a dangerous ethnic dimension from the start.
IGAD’s inclusion of civil-society representatives is based on the widely
held belief that they are broadly pro-peace and less ethnically divided and
‘political’ than others – but still able to influence armed actors. These
were the same reasons civil society was afforded a large role in the Darfur
peace process; however, Darfurian civil society proved to be politicised and
ethnically divided. (See our recent report
<http://www.crisisgroup.org/%7E/media/Files/africa/horn-of-africa/sudan/211-
sudan-s-spreading-conflict-iii-the-limits-of-darfur-s-peace-process.pdf>
Sudan’s Spreading Conflict (III): The Limits of Darfur’s Peace Process.)
South Sudanese civil society has shown similar tendencies and
community-based leaders have strongly expressed their support for various
armed actions.
Nevertheless, Darfur’s experience also proved these voices must be heard if
the peace process is to be accepted on the ground. It showed, too, that
inclusion should go beyond the usual civil-society organisations (CSOs) –
often funded and even created by external donors – to include groups and
individuals with more influence on the ground, such as community and
religious leaders.
Civil society is generally defined as “everything between the state and the
family”, and is also often thought to exclude the business and political (in
the strict sense) worlds. International mediators for the Darfur conflict
accepted a broad conception of civil society and made it an umbrella for six
overlapping categories: CSOs, traditional leaders, IDPs and refugees, women,
youth groups, and nomads. Ideally, civil society should include key
constituencies not fully represented by the (armed) negotiating parties. For
example, in Darfur, abbala (camel-herding) Arabs were not well represented
in the government’s delegations, despite being the group from which militias
were largely recruited. Civil-society inclusion in the 2009-11 Doha process
was aimed at involving them under the label “nomads”, but their principal
leader, Musa Hilal, was under UN Security Council sanctions and unable to
join talks.
In South Sudan, mediators will have to ensure that Nuer civilians and “white
army” members who took up arms in reaction to targeted killings of Nuer in
Juba are somehow included in talks. This will not be easy – and will stretch
the notion of civil society – as these elements are not fully represented by
the South Sudan People’s Liberation Army-in-Opposition (SPLA-IO) though many
have fought on its side. These and other armed ‘civilian’ groups not fully
aligned with one or other of the main parties will have to be represented if
peace is ultimately to be implemented on the ground.
>From the CPA to the Darfur process
Civil society’s role in the CPA negotiations between the Sudan government
(the ruling National Congress Party, NCP) and Sudan People’s Liberation
Movement (SPLM) was limited. Both the government and the SPLM managed not
only to circumscribe civil society’s role but also to co-opt some of its
members. The SPLM, in particular, in an attempt to portray the NCP as
exclusionary, managed to present itself as accommodating both South Sudanese
“grassroots” representatives and the more established northern CSOs. And
southern civil society joined the SPLM-led government of Southern Sudan en
masse following the signing of the CPA in 2005.
Most northern civil-society groups argued their exclusion proved that the
CPA’s declared aim – the democratisation of all Sudan – was made in bad
faith. Darfurians particularly resented that the SPLM’s inclusion in the
2005 “Government of National Unity” came at their expense; and indeed the
CPA later limited Khartoum’s ability to make power-sharing concessions to
opposition groups beyond the SPLM/A.
The CPA process became the model for subsequent Sudanese peace negotiations,
and when the Darfur talks started in 2003 they were not any more welcoming
of civil society than their predecessor. Yet the 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement
failed in large part because it was rejected by the civilian population, a
risk the ongoing South Sudan talks also face. As a result, subsequent
mediation efforts leading to the Doha process have
<http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/Civil%20Society%20in%20Darfur%20-%2
0Sept.%202010.pdf> re-emphasised the important role of civil society.
As the Darfur mediators became increasingly committed to civil society’s
inclusion, the parties created their own CSO-like organisations, including
governmental NGOs – “GONGOs” – and rebel-affiliated unions in
displaced-persons camps. The Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) – the
rebel umbrella created for the Doha negotiations – went further and
appointed one of the most active civil-society representatives, Dr. Tijani
Sese, as its leader. Mediators then assumed civil society would naturally
support the LJM and any agreement it might sign. This assumption proved
largely wrong.
Civil society’s neutrality was also diluted by the government’s successful
attempts to conflate civil-society representation with that of locally
elected officials (mostly from the NCP). Such efforts increased the number
of participants at the three civil-society conferences in Doha (from 170 in
November 2009, to 400 in July 2010 and 600 in May 2011), which led to a
marked decline in their meaningful contributions. And, rather than keeping
civil-society representatives continuously engaged, the mediators mostly
brought them in when government-rebel talks were blocked or delayed.
In May 2011, in an attempt to manage an increasingly unwieldy civil society,
the African Union-UN joint chief mediator, Djibril Bassolé, decided to limit
further consultations to a final All Darfur Stakeholders Conference. A
communiqué then claimed that the 600 civilian representatives had “endorsed”
the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD), a document written by the
mediators and not seen by the civil society representatives. It was signed
by the government and the LJM six weeks later. Dr. Sese then became the head
of the Darfur Regional Authority (DRA), in which other civil society members
(including intellectuals and diaspora representatives) joined former armed
actors – at great cost to their supposed neutrality.
The Doha mediators’ fast-tracking of the consultations over the agreement
robbed civil society of its stake in the DDPD and therefore of its
motivation to sell the deal back home, as well as to persuade non-signatory
rebels to join the deal. Since then, some civil-society representatives have
participated in meetings sponsored by the UN-African Union peacekeeping
mission to Darfur (UNAMID), putting them at odds with rebels excluded from
further talks; in March 2013, civil-society representatives en route to a
UN-sponsored conference were
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/04/07/special_report_darfur_unit
ed_nations_peacekeeping_investigation> kidnapped by rebels.
In addition to the Doha process, Darfurian civil society contributed to
parallel processes within Sudan itself. In 2008-9, the African Union Panel
on Darfur (AUPD), led by Thabo Mbeki, launched broad consultations on peace,
justice and reconciliation. (An AU Commission of Inquiry has been launched
in South Sudan with a similar mandate.) The AUPD consultations were supposed
to be followed by talks, involving civil society and elected officials,
which were blocked due to lack of security and freedom of speech in Darfur.
In the meantime, different local-level reconciliation conferences never
stopped taking place on the ground. The most visible ones, attracting
government intervention and international support, often failed; others,
more confidential and often crossing the line between government and rebel
areas, seemed more successful, though similarly at risk of being spoiled by
broader insecurity or well-intentioned but poorly planned international
efforts.
South Sudanese civil-society representatives face similar risks of
co-optation, by the parties or the mediators, and of physical danger if they
fall foul of armed groups. Unfortunately, most international organisations
lack the contextual understanding necessary to ensure they do not expose
civil-society actors to such risks.
What role in South Sudan?
A rushed selection process at the “multi-stakeholders symposium” for South
Sudan, held from 7-9 June in Addis Ababa,
<http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?iframe&page=imprimable&id_article=5127
4> exposed internal divides and external manipulation. Civil-society groups
who felt excluded or under-represented accused the government of spoiling
the process by having brought its own “civil society”; the opposition backed
those claims, also making clear it, too, wanted its own “civil society”
(based in rebel-held areas, UNMISS camps or in exile in foreign countries)
to be represented – though only in an observer role, as it remains
unwelcoming to other stakeholders’ more direct involvement. From 20-22 June,
the government, former political detainees and the opposition announced a
boycott of the negotiations in protest over their lack of inclusivity, after
which IGAD <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article51444> decided to
adjourn the talks.
Beyond the “civil societies” aligned with either the government or the
SPLM-IO, more neutral coalitions have also appeared increasingly divided
along political and ethnic lines. Civil society, before it is fully brought
into the IGAD mediation process, needs not only to convince the warring
parties of the intrinsic value of its contribution, but also to build some
consensus internally and with the mediators, not necessarily on the talks’
substance but at least about civil society’s role.
Until the June symposium, civil-society representatives in Addis Ababa were
limited to lobbying mediation and negotiating parties. Some would be
satisfied obtaining an official observer role at the talks. Others want
civil society to act as a full participant and separate party to the
negotiations – preferably independent of the similar role the now former
political detainees want to take. IGAD’s plan is for civil-society
representatives, as well as former detainees and political parties, to be
fully included in the political negotiations (excluding talks on cessation
of hostilities and ceasefire), while religious leaders would be only
observers. This has been accepted by the government but not by the SPLM-IO,
which wants others to be included only in “a consultative manner”.
Numbers do matter: the civil-society delegation needs to be big enough both
to avoid further claims of unfair selection and to resist co-optation of
individual members by the parties. Either way, civil-society representatives
must, like the warring parties, provide substantive input to the mediation’s
outputs – from the basic framework agreement to, ultimately, a new
constitution. Certainly civil society’s participation should not wait for a
national dialogue and reconciliation process, whose promise might be as
fragile as the CPA’s pledge for democratisation of the Sudans.
Nuer cattle herder in Unity state's rebel-held area. CRISIS GROUP/Jérôme
Tubiana
Nuer cattle herder in Unity state’s rebel-held area. CRISIS GROUP/Jérôme
Tubiana
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)