Questions of Inclusivity in South Sudan’s 2024 Elections: Gender and Ethnic Dilemmas
"South Sudan Independence Day Celebration at Diversey Harbor Grove" by danxoneil is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Since the independence of South Sudan in July 2011, the country has not held elections. Although elections were supposed to take place in 2015, the conflict that erupted in 2013 disrupted any prospects for it.
The Peace Agreement, initially signed in 2015, revitalised in 2018 and rebranded as the “roadmap for peace” in 2022, stipulates the holding of general elections in December 2024. For such suffrage to be legitimate, the country should address the prevailing insecurities, humanitarian crisis, and economic collapse in the lead up to the elections.
The absence of enabling conditions for fair and credible elections has been raised and debated by South Sudanese scholars. Some have even asked if South Sudan will be ready to hold elections come 2024. However, others advocate for the delinking of constitution-making from elections contending that “whereas South Sudan may not be ready for elections, democracy cannot wait”.
Aside from these concerns, South Sudan must ensure that elections are inclusive. This is in recognition of the simple fact that South Sudan is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual society. The question of inclusivity is a real conundrum as minorities need to be included in governance processes including constitution-making.
Owing to the centrality of inclusion, we endeavour, in this article, to examine two fundamental aspects of diversity: gender and ethnicity. This is because a vast majority of governance debates in South Sudan are centred on identities (ethnic and gender), in addition to the fact that women constitute a significant majority but are not true stakeholders in the country’s governance.
The rest of the article proceeds in three sections. Section 2 discusses the context in which elections will take place while section 3 identifies and discusses certain issues of inclusivity in terms of gender inclusion and ethnic diversity. The last section recasts the main strands of the article and makes some recommendations for policy.
The Context of Elections in South Sudan
South Sudan may not yet be ready for the elections, which are slated to take place in December 2024. This is true for many reasons and challenges, some of which were highlighted in the preceding section. For emphasis, the country is yet to meaningfully recover from ‘senseless’ civil war which has displaced dozens of people internally and into neighbouring countries, destroyed the social fabric upon which social cohesion was predicated and caused catastrophic humanitarian and economic crises.
Until the time of writing this article, no meaningful resolution has been witnessed in the form of a reformed economy, healing and reconciliation and political stability. Instead, most people still live in displaced settlements, communal violence persists, and the economy is worsening.
As mentioned earlier, the holding of national elections is provided for under the Revitalised Peace Agreement signed in 2018 by a multitude of politico-military groups including the government. However, the implementation of that Agreement has been slow, which has necessitated the parties to extend it by two more years until 2024 when elections are scheduled to be held. Some of the critical unresolved issues that have a bearing on the holding of elections include adopting a ‘permanent’ constitution and the registration of political parties.
These unresolved issues could impact the inclusion of women and ethnic minorities in elections. The following section reflects on this issue to demonstrate the challenges of inclusivity.
“Ensuring the robust participation of women and ethnic minorities in the upcoming election will require addressing these challenges and promoting inclusive policies.”
Issues of Inclusivity
When discussing the upcoming election in 2024, it is crucial to examine how the process will ensure the robust participation of women and ethnic minorities.
Gender Inclusion
Women in South Sudan are not only numerically strong, but they are also intellectually influential yet their actual space in the governance sphere remains insignificant. The country’s Constitution grants women the right to participate in decision-making through their political representation in all levels of government. There it is stated:
”women shall be accorded full and equal dignity of the person with men [and shall] have the right to participate equally with men in public life (article 16).”
Furthermore, the Constitution strengthens this position by committing ‘all levels of government’ to:
(a) promote women participation in public life and their representation in the legislative and executive organs by at least twenty-five per cent as an affirmative action to redress imbalances created by history, customs, and traditions; [and]
(b) enact laws to combat harmful customs and traditions which undermine the dignity and status of women (article 16(4)).
Although the South Sudanese Constitution has a seemingly progressive provision protecting women’s rights to participate in governance, this protection has yet to be fully realised in practice. Currently, only one of the 13 Governors is female, there is only one female national deputy speaker, and only one female Vice President, despite a good number of female members of parliament. The existing structural representation of women in politics appears to fall below their population ratio, and this disparity could worsen in the upcoming election.
To address this, election laws must not place barriers on women, such as requiring specific qualifications or experience, given the low levels of education among women in South Sudan. Additionally, many women lack knowledge of their constitutional rights, which hinders their participation in governance processes. Ensuring the robust participation of women and ethnic minorities in the upcoming election will require addressing these challenges and promoting inclusive policies.
Ethnic Diversity
South Sudan is a multi-ethnic country with approximately 64 different ethnic groups divided into 10 States and three Administrative Areas (Ruweng, Pibor and Abyei) all of which are in the so-called “greater” regions of Upper Nile, Equatoria and Bahr el Ghazel. Ethnicity is not necessarily a legal requirement for political organisation in terms of constitutional stipulation. Ethnicity has, however, gained prominence as a currency of politics in South Sudan. Ethnic groups have long complained of marginalisation, leading to calls for their own separate state to govern themselves. This situation has spotlighted ethnicity as a key issue that could potentially impact the upcoming elections. There is, therefore, a need to ensure ethnic inclusion by adopting measures such as:
• Encouraging political parties to nominate ethnic minorities in their political ranks and files;
• Ensuring affirmative action in the Constitution and electoral laws to guarantee ethnic minorities;
• Granting ethnic minorities a constitutional veto power in terms of right to their own language, culture and resources such as land; and
• In the event that federalism is adopted, constitutionalise the federal character principle in the national constitution.
Implementing these measures may promote equal representation of ethnic groups at levels of government institutions.
Conclusion and Recommendations
This article discussed the extent to which South Sudan is ready to hold elections in 2024 and the potential challenges it might face in promoting gender and ethnic inclusion. It highlighted the inadequacies in the constitutional and political frameworks for gender and ethnic inclusion and suggests the following recommendations to ensure inclusive elections:
• The national electoral laws and institutions should strive to reflect gender parity and ethnic diversity by guaranteeing the right of minorities to participate in elections;
• The political parties should adopt and or strengthen (where it already exists) the women list strategy to guarantee and promote women's participation in governance; and
• The election materials should be translated into different languages to widen access to the electoral process by all ethnic groups.
Dr. Joseph Geng Akech is an Assistant Professor of law and Head of Research and Publication at the School of Law at the University of Juba.
Cedonia Victor Legge is an advocate and LLM scholar at the University of Juba.