In the Eye of the Storm: An Analysis of Internal Conflict in South Sudan’s Jonglei State

This report analyses conflict in Jonglei through the post-Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and independence period up to late 2013. It is based primarily on an in-depth desk review of over 400 documents related to conflict, development, state building, humanitarian aid, ethnic relations, politics, and other topics in South Sudan as a whole and Jonglei specifically. It was written for, and also draws on fieldwork conducted as part of, the UK Department for International Development (DFID)-funded Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC), a six-year, seven-country study of state legitimacy, state capacity and livelihood trajectories in conflict-affected situations. The SLRC South Sudan project is focused primarily on Jonglei, where the weight of ongoing conflict was impressed on the research team during a fieldwork visit in early 2013. This led to a shift away from a sole focus on Nuer and Shilluk communities in Jonglei and Upper Nile toward a deeper exploration of the research questions as they relate to the context of ongoing conflict within Jonglei.