News about my country, South Sudan, probably doesn’t make it very often to your social media feed. When it does, it’s for stories about deadly attacks, or refugees fleeing their homes, or the humanitarian emergency that keeps many of my compatriots in its grip.
Seven years ago, South Sudan was born into an atmosphere of optimism. My father’s generation had persevered through decades of war, relishing the promise of a new horizon to build prosperity. Finally, that possibility seemed close to becoming a reality, but the conflict that broke out in 2013 shattered it.
Since then, tens of thousands of South Sudanese have been killed. Half of the population is now food-insecure. One quarter has been displaced. We had momentary reprieves from violence, including the 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict, but South Sudan remains at war with itself. Today, violence is part of our everyday life.
If you think that there’s no hope for peace in South Sudan … well, it’s not your fault. After all, everything you hear is bad news. But my perspective is a bit different. I’m a 32-year-old South Sudanese development worker with Search for Common Ground, and I see daily evidence that hope is very much alive in my country when I go to work.
My organization runs programs that build relationships of trust between groups across ethnic and political divides. We call ourselves peacebuilders. We look at the drivers of conflict at the local level and bring everybody to the table to find resolutions. We find ways for communities to work together toward addressing shared needs, like safety, education, representation — the titular “Common Ground” in my organization’s name. In this way, we create bonds of mutual trust, even in the most polarized environments.
We then use media to reinforce these bonds by giving a voice to those at the margins of decision-making. Radio, the most popular medium in South Sudan, is an especially powerful tool to achieve that. Currently, we produce two radio programs in partnership with the Catholic Radio Network. The first is a talk show called Hiwar al-Shabaab, meaning youth dialogue; it provides a platform for young people to call in and discuss their issues. The second is a drama, Sergeant Esther, following the trials and triumphs of a female police officer who uses nonviolent methods to uphold the law.
I know what you’re thinking. Local peace initiatives and radio shows seem small in comparison with the daunting problem of interethnic conflict in South Sudan. However, the results we achieved are groundbreaking. In areas targeted by these projects, independent evaluators measured a staggering 200 percent growth in interactions between tribes, of which 90 percent were positive. They measured the increase in intertribal trust at 63 percent.
I see these accomplishments and I wonder — what would happen if we scaled these initiatives to target hundreds of communities across South Sudan? How would my country change?
Internationally, many efforts to end the war are taking place. In February, the High-Level Revitalization Forum held in Addis Ababa brought together the South Sudanese government, opposition parties, and other actors to revive the components of the 2015 Agreement. The Forum ended without major gains, but many saw it as a promising sign that future talks could bring about a new peace agreement.
I believe that these institutional efforts are critical to solving the crisis. But without grassroots peacebuilding efforts now, it will be difficult to rebuild the relationships needed for citizens to embrace the peace agreement when it comes. As the world’s largest dedicated peace-building organization, we know it from experience: in absence of local buy-in, ceasefires negotiated at the national level don’t last.
That’s why it’s so important to support and scale local, pragmatic, effective peacebuilding programs in South Sudan. Not only are they transforming violence into cooperation in local communities, they also are a promising avenue to build a national constituency for peace, which can serve as the backbone for future peace talks. The way to ending the horrific and hugely destabilizing crisis in my country goes through grassroots peacebuilding as much as it does through high-level efforts.
It’s time for the international community to recognize that the kind of local work we do as “peacebuilders” works. It’s time to invest in it and take it to a wider public. It’s time to link local experts with policymakers, so that any peace agreement is built on the needs of the people who are supposed to uphold it.
It’s time to embrace and cultivate the signs of hope that I see everyday as I do my job. When that happens, I bet you’ll start hearing different news about South Sudan.
Daniel Kuyu Lokolong is a media coordinator at Search for Common Ground, based in Juba, South Sudan.
