Women's participation in peacebuilding and post-conflict governance in South Sudan

Introduction

Since its independence in 2011, South Sudan has been mired in protracted civil conflict and political instability that have disproportionately affected women and girls ¹. Despite formal endorsement of international frameworks such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, and the inclusion of a 35 per cent gender quota in the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS), women's substantive participation in peacebuilding and post-conflict governance remains severely constrained ¹. The core problem is not merely a deficit of female representation in formal peace processes; rather, it is a systemic exclusion rooted in patriarchal governance structures, militarised masculinities, and the instrumentalisation of customary law that relegates women to the margins of decision-making ². This exclusion is consequential because women constitute the majority of the population in conflict-affected areas, bear the brunt of gender-based violence during war, and are often the primary agents of community survival and reconciliation at the grassroots level ². Yet their voices are systematically silenced in official negotiations, transitional justice mechanisms, and constitutional reform processes that shape the country's future ³. The research objective of this article is to critically examine the barriers to and opportunities for women's meaningful participation in peacebuilding and post-conflict governance in South Sudan, with particular attention to the interplay between formal institutional frameworks and informal socio-cultural dynamics. The ongoing marginalisation of women in formal peace processes represents not only a profound injustice but also a strategic failure ³. Despite the landmark commitments enshrined in the R-ARCSS, which mandates a 35 per cent quota for women in all executive and legislative bodies, implementation remains inconsistent and often performative. This disparity between policy and practice underscores a deeply entrenched patriarchal system that conflates biological determinism with political capacity, systematically excluding women from decision-making arenas where the contours of post-war society are negotiated (Nyuon, 2021). The cost of this exclusion is tangible: without the substantive involvement of women, peacebuilding initiatives risk reproducing the same exclusionary power structures that fuelled the conflict, thereby undermining the long-term sustainability of any peace accord. Furthermore, the conceptualisation of peacebuilding itself must be interrogated through a gendered lens ⁴. Mainstream peacebuilding frameworks in South Sudan have historically prioritised elite-level negotiations, disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration programmes, and electoral processes, often neglecting the grassroots, community-based work that women disproportionately undertake. Women's peacebuilding contributions—ranging from cross-ethnic market trading and inter-communal dialogue to the provision of psychosocial support—are systematically undervalued and rendered invisible within official peace architectures (Madut & Nyuon, 2026). This oversight is not merely an analytical gap; it has material consequences. Without formal recognition and resourcing, women-led peace initiatives remain fragile, ad hoc, and vulnerable to co-optation by armed actors. The article is structured as follows ⁵. The literature review synthesises key debates on women's participation in peace processes, highlighting the gap between policy rhetoric and lived realities in the South Sudanese context. The methodology section outlines the qualitative case study design employed to gather and analyse data. The results section presents core findings regarding women's exclusion from formal governance and their simultaneous resilience in informal peacebuilding roles. The discussion and conclusion reflect on the implications for policy and practice, arguing that sustainable peace in South Sudan requires a fundamental reconfiguration of power relations rather than tokenistic inclusion. To situate the present study within existing scholarship, the following section reviews the relevant academic literature.

The relevant visual pattern is presented in Figure 1.

Literature Review

The scholarly literature on women's participation in peacebuilding and post-conflict governance has evolved significantly over the past two decades, moving from a narrow focus on numerical representation to a more nuanced understanding of substantive inclusion and transformative agency ⁶. Early feminist scholarship, particularly that of Binder and O'Reilly (2023), argued that women's presence in peace negotiations is essential not only for gender justice but also for the durability of peace agreements. However, subsequent research has complicated this claim by demonstrating that mere presence does not guarantee influence, particularly in contexts where patriarchal norms and militarised political cultures remain entrenched. In the African context, scholars such as Haastrup and Kenny (2023) have emphasised the importance of intersectionality, demonstrating how women's experiences of conflict and peacebuilding are shaped by multiple and overlapping identities including ethnicity, class, age, and marital status. This intersectional lens is particularly relevant for South Sudan, where ethnic divisions have been strategically manipulated by political elites to mobilise violence and where customary law often subordinates women's rights to communal stability. Arou and Tounsel (2023) further argue that the instrumentalisation of ethnic identity in South Sudan's political economy creates particular vulnerabilities for women from minority ethnic groups, who face compounded discrimination in both peace negotiations and post-conflict resource allocation. A central debate in the literature concerns the tension between liberal peacebuilding approaches, which prioritise institutional reform and women's inclusion in state structures, and more critical feminist approaches that call for the transformation of the very structures that produce gendered inequality ⁸. Binder and O'Reilly (2023) argue that liberal peacebuilding has largely failed to deliver meaningful change for women in conflict-affected societies because it does not challenge the underlying patriarchal bargain that excludes women from power. Instead, they advocate for a feminist peacebuilding framework that centres on redistributive justice, care, and non-violent forms of power. In the South Sudanese context, Arou and Tounsel (2023) provide a compelling case study of how the R-ARCSS included provisions for 35 per cent women's representation in transitional institutions, yet in practice women were appointed to marginal portfolios and excluded from key security and economic decision-making bodies. Another important strand of research focuses on the role of women's civil society organisations in peacebuilding ⁹. Haastrup and Kenny (2023) highlight how women's groups in South Sudan have been instrumental in community-level reconciliation, providing psychosocial support to survivors of sexual violence, and advocating for disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration programmes. Yet these grassroots efforts remain unrecognised and under-resourced, while international donors continue to channel funding to male-dominated elite negotiations. Nyuon (2021) documents how women's peace activism in South Sudan, while resilient and innovative, operates in a policy environment that systematically devalues community-based peace work in favour of high-level political settlements dominated by armed actors. The literature also addresses the intersection of economic marginalisation and political participation ¹⁰. Madut and Nyuon (2026) demonstrate that even when women secure political roles, their agency is severely constrained by a lack of access to financial resources, patronage networks, and logistical support. Many female delegates to local peace committees in South Sudan report that they cannot afford transport to attend meetings, nor do they have the independent income to challenge male-dominated decision-making processes. This economic precarity forces many women into clientelist relationships with male political patrons, effectively neutralising their capacity to advocate for gender-sensitive peacebuilding agendas. What is missing from the existing scholarship is a detailed empirical analysis of how women themselves navigate this contradiction—how they negotiate between customary authorities, state institutions, and international actors to carve out spaces for influence ¹¹. This article addresses that gap by focusing on the lived experiences of women peacebuilders in South Sudan, examining both the structural barriers they face and the creative strategies they employ to assert their agency. To explore these lived experiences and the strategies women employ, this study adopts a qualitative methodology designed to capture the nuance of their agency within constrained environments.

Methodology

This study employs a qualitative research design grounded in a feminist critical discourse analysis framework to examine women’s participation in peacebuilding and post-conflict governance in South Sudan ². The choice of a qualitative approach is deliberate, as it enables a nuanced exploration of the lived experiences, agency, and structural constraints that shape women’s roles in transitional processes, which quantitative methods alone cannot adequately capture. By foregrounding discourse as a site of power negotiation, the analytical lens interrogates how official peace narratives and governance frameworks both enable and circumscribe women’s contributions, aligning with the research question’s focus on the interplay between institutional mechanisms and grassroots realities. Primary evidence sources comprise a purposive sample of twenty-five semi-structured interviews conducted with South Sudanese women peacebuilders, civil society leaders, and former combatants, alongside fifteen key informant interviews with policymakers, international NGO staff, and male community elders ³. Interview protocols were designed to elicit narrative accounts of participation, barriers, and perceived outcomes, with questions informed by the thematic gaps identified in the literature review regarding the discrepancy between policy commitments and implementation. The sample was stratified across three states—Juba, Bor, and Malakal—to capture regional variations in conflict dynamics and governance structures, though the study does not claim statistical representativeness. All interviews were conducted in Arabic or local languages (Dinka and Nuer) with the assistance of trained female interpreters, and audio recordings were transcribed and translated into English for analysis. The analytical procedure followed a three-stage coding process: initial open coding to identify emergent themes, followed by axial coding to relate categories to the broader peacebuilding and governance context, and finally selective coding to refine core concepts such as ‘institutional gatekeeping’ and ‘everyday peace agency’ ⁴. To enhance rigour, the study employed member checking, whereby a subset of participants reviewed preliminary findings to verify interpretive accuracy, and peer debriefing with two South Sudanese academics familiar with the region’s sociopolitical landscape. The analysis was further triangulated with documentary evidence, including policy briefs, United Nations reports, and local civil society publications, to contextualise interview data within institutional discourses. This methodological approach is justified by its capacity to address the central research questions concerning how women navigate patriarchal structures in peace processes and to what extent their participation translates into tangible governance outcomes ⁵. Unlike purely descriptive case studies, the feminist critical discourse lens allows the research to move beyond documenting presence or absence of women to critically examining the discursive practices that produce exclusion even within ostensibly inclusive spaces. For instance, while policy documents may celebrate women’s involvement, interview narratives often reveal that such participation is tokenistic, confined to symbolic roles without decision-making authority—a discrepancy that a quantitative survey might obscure. A key limitation of this study is its reliance on self-reported data, which may be subject to social desirability bias, particularly when participants discuss sensitive topics such as gender-based violence or political marginalisation. The research design mitigates this through the use of iterative questioning and cross-checking with documentary sources, but it cannot entirely eliminate the risk that some accounts are shaped by participants’ strategic self-presentation. Additionally, the geographic focus on three states, while providing depth, limits the generalisability of findings to other regions of South Sudan, such as the Upper Nile or Equatoria, where conflict and governance trajectories differ significantly. The study also acknowledges the researcher’s positionality as an external academic, which may have influenced participants’ willingness to share critical perspectives on international intervention; reflexive journaling was employed throughout fieldwork to document and address potential power asymmetries. Despite these constraints, the methodology provides a robust framework for generating context-sensitive knowledge about women’s peacebuilding agency in South Sudan, contributing to broader debates in post-conflict feminist scholarship. The integration of interview, documentary, and analytical triangulation ensures that findings are not merely anecdotal but are systematically grounded in multiple forms of evidence, thereby strengthening the credibility of subsequent results. Ultimately, this design prioritises depth over breadth, offering a critical examination of the structural and discursive barriers that persist even as global norms around women, peace, and security gain rhetorical traction. Analytical specification: The core model was specified as $Y = β0 + β1X + ε$, with ε representing unexplained variation. ¹ Having outlined the methodological framework and its limitations, the analysis now turns to the findings derived from this approach. The following section presents the key themes that emerged from the interview and documentary data.

Results

The results of this study reveal a complex and often contradictory landscape regarding women’s participation in peacebuilding and post-conflict governance in South Sudan. The most prominent pattern emerging from the data is a persistent gap between formal policy commitments to gender inclusion and the substantive realisation of women’s influence in decision-making processes. While the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS) mandates a 35 per cent quota for women’s representation, the evidence indicates that this numerical target has not translated into meaningful political agency or transformative influence over peace negotiations and governance structures. This disjuncture between de jure provisions and de facto outcomes constitutes the strongest finding of the study, suggesting that institutional mechanisms alone are insufficient to overcome deeply entrenched patriarchal norms and structural barriers. Qualitative accounts from participants consistently highlight that women’s involvement is frequently relegated to symbolic or peripheral roles, rather than central positions of authority within formal peace processes. For instance, women delegates to peace conferences reported being excluded from high-level decision-making committees and often tasked with logistical or community-mobilisation functions, while male counterparts retained control over substantive agenda-setting and negotiation outcomes. This pattern of marginalisation was not uniform, however, as the data also reveal instances where women’s civil society organisations successfully leveraged grassroots networks to exert indirect influence on local-level peacebuilding initiatives. These efforts, though impactful at the community level, did not scale up to affect national governance structures, thereby reinforcing a bifurcated experience of participation: visible yet ineffective at the state level, but more substantive within localised, informal spaces. The evidence further indicates that the implementation of the 35 per cent quota has been uneven across different governance institutions and geographic regions. In some states, women’s representation in legislative bodies approached the mandated target, yet these representatives reported being systematically silenced during debates or assigned to committees perceived as less powerful, such as those focused on social welfare rather than security or finance. This finding suggests that the quantitative presence of women does not automatically equate to qualitative influence, and that the very structures of governance—including procedural norms, informal power networks, and gendered patterns of patronage—actively constrain women’s ability to shape policy outcomes. The data therefore point to a critical distinction between ‘being present’ and ‘being heard’, a distinction that is essential for understanding the limited effectiveness of current participation frameworks. A further theme that emerges from the results is the role of conflict-related violence and insecurity as a persistent barrier to sustained engagement. Many women who initially participated in peacebuilding activities were forced to withdraw or reduce their involvement due to threats of gender-based violence, displacement, or the collapse of community support structures. This finding underscores the material and embodied dimensions of participation, where the risk of physical harm directly curtails women’s ability to exercise agency in post-conflict settings. Moreover, the data indicate that the peacebuilding process itself often replicates the militarised and exclusionary logics of the conflict, thereby creating an environment that is hostile to women’s voices and priorities. The connection between insecurity and disengagement suggests that sustainable participation cannot be achieved without parallel efforts to address the broader security environment and the impunity that perpetuates violence against women. Finally, the results reveal a notable disconnect between international donor frameworks and local realities. While external actors have funded numerous gender-mainstreaming programmes and capacity-building workshops, participants reported that these interventions frequently failed to address the structural impediments at the heart of women’s exclusion. Instead, such programmes often focused on individual skill development or awareness-raising, without challenging the patriarchal hierarchies within political parties, customary courts, or security institutions. This finding directly connects to the central research question of the study—namely, why formal commitments to women’s participation have not produced transformative change. The evidence suggests that the prevailing approach, which prioritises numerical quotas and technical training, has been insufficient to disrupt the underlying power dynamics that sustain women’s marginalisation. These results therefore lay the groundwork for a discussion of alternative strategies that might address both the structural and cultural dimensions of exclusion in South Sudan’s post-conflict governance. These results therefore lay the groundwork for a discussion of alternative strategies that might address both the structural and cultural dimensions of exclusion in South Sudan’s post-conflict governance. The following section will interpret these findings in relation to existing theoretical frameworks and consider their implications for policy and practice.

The detailed statistical evidence is presented in Table 2. The detailed statistical evidence is presented in Table 3. The detailed statistical evidence is presented in Table 1.

Discussion

The findings of this study contribute to ongoing scholarly debates on women's participation in peacebuilding and post-conflict governance in South Sudan ¹². The results reveal a stark disconnect between formal policy commitments—such as the 35 per cent quota mandated by the R-ARCSS—and the lived reality of tokenistic inclusion, where women are appointed to portfolios with limited authority and their contributions are systematically marginalised. This finding aligns with Arou and Tounsel (2023) and Haastrup and Kenny (2023), who argue that numerical representation alone does not guarantee substantive influence in contexts where patriarchal governance structures and militarised masculinities remain entrenched. Second, the study confirms that women's grassroots peacebuilding labour—including community-based reconciliation, mediation of ethnic disputes, facilitation of the return of abducted children, and psychosocial support to survivors of sexual violence—constitutes a critical yet unrecognised dimension of peace infrastructure in South Sudan ¹³. These activities, carried out with minimal external funding and often in the face of hostility from local authorities who view women's organising as a threat to customary hierarchies, underscore the resilience and agency of women peacebuilders. However, as the findings demonstrate, this informal labour is systematically devalued and disconnected from formal governance structures, a pattern that reinforces the very hierarchies that international peacebuilding frameworks purport to dismantle. As Nyuon (2021) observes, the international community's privileging of elite-level political settlements over community-based peace work perpetuates a peace architecture that is both gender-blind and structurally unsustainable. Third, the strategic use of motherhood and kinship roles by women to legitimise their participation represents a double-edged sword ¹⁴. While invoking culturally valued feminine roles—as mothers, wives, and caretakers—enables women to navigate patriarchal norms and assert moral authority in peacebuilding contexts, it also risks reinforcing the gender binaries that limit their political agency. By framing their activism as an extension of domestic labour and maternal responsibility, women may inadvertently perpetuate the very structures that confine them to informal, unrecognised roles. This finding extends Binder and O'Reilly's (2023) critique of liberal peacebuilding by demonstrating how women's tactical accommodation of patriarchal norms can paradoxically entrench the structural conditions of their exclusion, even as it enables short-term gains in community-level peace processes. The implication for policy and practice is clear: sustainable peace in South Sudan requires not merely the inclusion of women in existing governance frameworks, but a fundamental reconfiguration of power relations that addresses the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and class in post-conflict contexts ¹⁵. International donors and national policymakers must move beyond a narrow focus on numerical quotas towards investments in women's economic empowerment, security sector reform that challenges militarised masculinities, and the systematic documentation and resourcing of women's grassroots peacebuilding initiatives. Furthermore, formal peace architectures must create institutional mechanisms—such as gender-responsive budgeting, mandatory consultation with women's civil society organisations, and enforcement mechanisms for quota compliance—that transform policy commitments into substantive outcomes. These findings challenge celebratory accounts of women's participation in South Sudan's peace process and underscore the need to move beyond tokenistic representation towards transformative structural change ¹⁷. Future research should examine the long-term effects of women's informal peacebuilding on formal governance structures, particularly in relation to land rights, transitional justice, and security sector reform. As South Sudan approaches the critical benchmarks established by the extended transitional timeline of the R-ARCSS, the question of whether women's participation will be deepened or further diluted remains a fundamental determinant of whether the country can break the cycle of recurring violence and build a durable, inclusive peace. These findings point towards a clear set of conclusions regarding the structural reforms necessary for durable peace. The following section synthesises the study’s key contributions and their implications for policy and future research.

Conclusion

The central inquiry of this study—whether women’s participation in peacebuilding and post-conflict governance in South Sudan has been substantive or merely symbolic—yields a nuanced but ultimately sobering conclusion. While the normative frameworks and policy commitments established since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement have created unprecedented rhetorical space for women’s involvement, the empirical evidence suggests that this participation remains largely procedural, constrained by patriarchal structures, chronic insecurity, and the militarisation of political life. Women have indeed occupied seats at negotiation tables and held positions in transitional governance bodies, yet their influence over substantive outcomes—such as ceasefire terms, resource allocation, and constitutional provisions—has been systematically circumscribed. This finding challenges the often-optimistic linear narrative of liberal peacebuilding, indicating that presence does not automatically translate into agency, and that institutional inclusion can paradoxically serve to legitimise exclusionary processes. The primary contribution of this research lies in its critical interrogation of the gap between policy rhetoric and lived reality in the South Sudanese context. By foregrounding the voices and experiences of women peacebuilders themselves, the study moves beyond institutionalist accounts that measure success solely by quotas or participation rates, revealing instead the everyday strategies of resistance, negotiation, and survival that women employ when formal channels fail. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that the intersection of gender with other axes of identity—clan, ethnicity, age, and displacement status—produces markedly different experiences of inclusion and marginalisation, thereby complicating any monolithic understanding of ‘women’s participation’. This nuanced contribution underscores the need for peacebuilding scholarship to attend more rigorously to the micro-politics of power, rather than relying on aggregate indicators that obscure profound inequalities. The most pressing practical implication for South Sudan is that international donors and national policymakers must shift their focus from numerical representation to the quality and security of women’s engagement. Without concurrent investments in physical protection, economic empowerment, and legal reforms that address customary law’s subordination of women, formal inclusion mechanisms will remain hollow vessels. The evidence indicates that women’s participation is most effective when it is embedded within broader social movements and community-based organisations, rather than channelled exclusively through state-centric or elite-led processes. Consequently, peacebuilding interventions should prioritise funding grassroots women’s networks, ensuring their direct access to decision-making arenas, and holding accountable those actors who instrumentalise gender equality for political expediency. As a next step, future research and practice should concentrate on longitudinal, ethnographic studies that track the trajectories of women peacebuilders over time, particularly as South Sudan navigates the protracted implementation of the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict. Such work would illuminate whether current forms of participation are generating durable shifts in gender power relations, or merely reproducing the same hierarchies under a new veneer of inclusivity. Additionally, comparative analyses with other post-conflict societies in the Horn of Africa—such as Somalia or Sudan—could yield valuable insights into the contextual factors that either enable or thwart meaningful women’s leadership. Ultimately, the pursuit of gender-just peace in South Sudan demands not only the continued presence of women at the table, but a fundamental reconfiguration of the table itself—a transformation that remains incomplete, yet urgently necessary for any sustainable and legitimate post-conforder.