From Insurgency to Statehood: The Impact of Evolving Sovereignty on Patterns of Violence Against Civilians in South Sudan (1999–2016) : A longitudinal case study of one-sided violence in Southern and South Sudan as sovereignty evolved.

Sammanfattning

This thesis explores the impact of the variations in sovereignty on patterns of lethal violence against civilians in Southern/South Sudan from 1999 to 2016. It fills an important gap in the literature on humanitarian protection and civil war violence. Although academic literature explains why civilians are targeted, it rarely investigates how changes in political authority within a single case influence the observable level of violence over time. The research uses a longitudinal between-case design, comparing three analytically distinct periods: the civil war (1999–2004), partial sovereignty under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005–2010), and post-independence statehood (2011–2016). The study systematically measures civilian fatalities annually as an indicator of deliberate targeting, using one-sided violence (OSV) data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, supplemented by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. Results indicate that sovereignty did not produce a linear decrease in violence but a reconfiguration of its level, form, and volatility. The civil war period when sovereignty was fully contested (1999–2004) was the second most violent, with 1,237 civilian deaths with extreme volatility, including 537 deaths in 2002. Violence (OSV) drops sharply from 360 in 2004 to 58 in 2005 and did not exceed 175 per year during the CPA period which was the calmest with 404 (OSV) deaths. During this period, there were attempts to monopolize violence by absorbing all fighting groups into the army via the 2006 Juba Declaration. In contrast, the post-2011 recognition of sovereignty did not translate into improved protection for civilians but degenerated into elite fragmentation with weak institutional capacity that led to renewed and often more centralized violence against civilians and produced the highest OSV of 2091 deaths. The study concludes that sovereignty does not directly determine violence outcomes but rather indirectly influences violence by changing the strategic environment, incentives, information, and regulatory capacity. These findings challenge assumptions that statehood inherently enhances civilian protection and underscore the need to incorporate the political authority component into protection of civilians’ frameworks.