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

Abstract

Since its independence in 2011, South Sudan has experienced protracted civil conflict and political instability that disproportionately affect women and girls. Despite formal endorsement of international frameworks such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 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. This article critically examines the barriers to and opportunities for women's meaningful participation, employing a feminist critical discourse analysis of policy documents, peace agreements, and scholarly commentaries. The findings reveal a persistent and significant gap between formal recognition of women's roles and the substantive realisation of that participation. While women are frequently active in unofficial mediation and grassroots reconciliation efforts, their voices are largely excluded from high-level peace negotiations and governance structures that determine the post-conflict political landscape. Cultural and structural barriers—including patriarchal norms, limited access to education and economic resources, and ongoing insecurity—interact to reinforce this exclusion. Even when women are appointed to peace committees or transitional bodies, they often face tokenism, being assigned symbolic roles without authority to shape agendas or outcomes. The study confirms that women's grassroots peacebuilding labour constitutes a critical yet unrecognised dimension of peace infrastructure, systematically devalued and disconnected from formal governance structures. This pattern reinforces the very hierarchies that international peacebuilding frameworks purport to dismantle. The article concludes that achieving meaningful inclusion requires not only institutional reform but also a fundamental transformation of the patriarchal governance structures and militarised masculinities that sustain women's marginalisation in South Sudan's fragile peace architecture.