*Some pseudonyms are used to offer protection to the identities of interviewees.
“I saw a lot of suffering.” The previous guy, Lokwi, gestures against the girl cooking beside their hut as he talks. “The husband of this woman … was killed here.”
The girl is Lokwi’s sister-in-law. He’s recalling the day in 1988 when his brother was once killed through squaddies from the Sudan Folks’s Liberation Military (SPLA). Lokwi was once nonetheless a kid when the SPLA captured the city of Kapoeta and surrounding settlements, the place he lived along with his circle of relatives. The day his brother was once killed, everyone was once compelled to depart:
There was once not anything excellent that day … They burned all of the villages and the warriors attacked the civilians. Folks have been scattered.
Map of South Sudan.
Bogdan Serban/Alamy Inventory Vector
South Sudan – a central African nation of round 11.5 million folks break up in part through the White Nile – suffered many years of clash previous to gaining independence from the remainder of Sudan in 2011. Whilst independence introduced optimism, this was once thwarted two years later through interior disputes some of the ruling events that resulted in a resurgence of the violence.
Whilst a ceasefire was once brokered in 2018 and a power-sharing settlement signed between opposing political factions, there was a loss of political will to put into effect it. The dire financial state of affairs, worsening meals lack of confidence pushed through local weather exchange and political instability, and legacies of ethnic rivalries proceed to perpetuate ethnically motivated violence and mistrust between communities. In April, the pinnacle of the UN venture in South Sudan, Nicholas Haysom, warned that the arena’s youngest country is as soon as once more on the point of civil struggle.
Amid this resurgence of violence, Lokwi – who’s from the Toposa network – remains to be haunted through reminiscences of the assault that killed his brother. Sitting beneath the colour of a tree within the village the place it happened, he explains how he fled into the bush and survived for days on wild fruit till, ravenous, he controlled to get to the city of Narus, the place he was once given some meals through a neighborhood Dinka guy.
When Lokwi in spite of everything returned to his village, he discovered the entirety destroyed through hearth – huts, farm animals and granaries “all burned”. While he determined to start out once more and rebuild the village, his surviving brother, now residing in Narus, promised “never to step in this land again because of the memories and pain”.
SPLA squaddies on patrol out of doors the city of Kapoeta throughout the lengthy civil struggle that preceded independence in 2011.
Zuma Press/Alamy Inventory Picture
As of late, Lokwi works as a peace activist in South Sudan. He spends numerous time encouraging folks in his village and the encompassing house to interact in non violent discussion with rival teams – and to withstand violence. With an expression of outrage, he explains the difficulties he faces in dissuading younger males from enticing in violence:
Once I inform them to forestall the clash … we’ve properties and households who pay attention and keep calm, however different people just like the [male] youths don’t pay attention, they nonetheless create issues.
South Sudan’s lengthy historical past of farm animals raiding
Over the process 2024, Anna Adiyo Sebit and 3 different South Sudanese researchers interviewed greater than 400 women and men from South Sudan’s Toposa and Nuer communities as a part of the XCEPT programme. This programme, founded at King’s Faculty London, seeks to know the function that conflict-related trauma performs in influencing who engages in violence and who doesn’t.
In addition to inter-ethnic preventing, South Sudan has a protracted historical past of farm animals raiding. Livestock are central to the pastoralist communities which make up over part of the inhabitants, together with ethnic teams such because the Dinka, Nuer and Toposa.
In maximum rural families, monetary capital is normally held in farm animals, basically cows – which might be additionally required for dowry bills and as repayment for any crimes dedicated. This puts prime worth on farm animals possession, which means that raiding and inter-community disputes over farm animals are not unusual.
Amongst South Sudan’s rural families, a lot of the monetary capital is held in cows.
Diego Delso by means of Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SA
And while those disputes have been as soon as fought with sticks, stones and spears, years of political clash have left the rustic awash with weapons – so farm animals raiding has transform a deadly process. As one previous guy who described himself as a “retired warrior” defined:
In our grandparents’ and grand ancestors’ [time], in battles or preventing we used stones, pangas, sticks, spears and arrows. [At this time there were] uncommon fights or raids waged towards [other] tribes … However after the advent of AK-47 system weapons, it sped up [to] upper numbers of raids and larger casualties in each communities.
Amongst those pastoralist communities, gender norms resolve that the place girls and women are tasked with keeping up home lifestyles, together with maintaining subsistence farming and developing huts, males are anticipated to stay and safe farm animals. Many younger males are lively in farm animals camps, which might be in spaces with higher pastures the place cows are taken to graze – however may also be at risk of raids from different ethnic teams.
In lots of portions of rural South Sudan, younger males are anticipated to combat to safe and offer protection to their livelihood – together with reaching the desired “bride price” for his or her marriage to head forward. A success farm animals raids can earn a tender guy recognize amongst his friends.
However the trauma of experiencing violence from a tender age, as such a lot of of those younger males have, may be an element within the perpetuation of more than a few varieties of violence in maturity, together with the superiority of revenge killings.
The prime charges of violence also are having a devastating have an effect on on girls and women in South Sudan. In keeping with a 2024 UN Inhabitants Fund learn about, 65% of girls and women have skilled some type of gender-based violence, of which intimate spouse violence is probably the most prevalent. The UN Undertaking in South Sudan has additionally reported a steep build up in sexual violence and abductions of girls and women through armed teams in 2024.
South Sudan’s prime charges of violence are having a devastating have an effect on on girls and women.
Paul Jeffrey/Alamy Inventory Picture
Acutely aware of the superiority of violence towards girls through farm animals early life, Lokwi speaks of confronting the problem at network conferences in his village the place he brings in combination contributors of rival communities:
The youths also are a part of the assembly. Everyone is given the danger from each communities to speak, and we inform them ‘stop killing women in the bush’. I inform them that ladies are those who give delivery to generations, and [ask]: ‘Why do you kill women?’ [Some] will really feel touched and pay attention and prevent – however there are different people [for] whom killing is a part of their lifestyles … They’re going to nonetheless kill girls.
Masculine expectancies
In South Sudan, like many nations, masculine expectancies that affiliate males with being the supplier or protector, and with traits of energy, stoicism and bravado, play crucial function in how males enjoy trauma and the coping mechanisms they use.
Males are incessantly socialised into suppressing feelings similar to unhappiness or harm. In consequence, selection shops for coping with trauma and rigidity can manifest in additional violent or competitive feelings.
I’ve spent a few years researching how societal expectancies of masculinity play into the best way males reply to nerve-racking studies. In narratives of wartime struggling, our working out of male trauma is incessantly overshadowed through the affiliation of masculinity with the perpetration of violence.
Whilst no longer all males affected by trauma reply in the similar method, analysis through the Brazilian NGO Promundo has discovered that males and boys are much more likely than girls and women to showcase maladaptive coping behaviour similar to risk-taking, low bodily process, withdrawal and self-harm – or violence in its more than one bureaucracy. There may be proof that charges of alcohol and substance abuse are upper amongst males suffering from trauma or prime ranges of rigidity.
Mental research recommend a hyperlink between masculine norms, emotional restriction, and PTSD signs. As such, males are much less prone to search assist or divulge heart’s contents to others in regards to the difficulties they’re experiencing. This in flip will increase their threat of growing damaging coping mechanisms.
All through clash or in scenarios of acute meals lack of confidence, day-to-day stresses thru an lack of ability to fulfil masculine expectancies can transform specifically acute – and result in more and more violent behaviour. This trend emerges in most of the interviews performed for the XCEPT mission.
SPLA squaddies in 2016: the pinnacle of the UN venture in South Sudan has warned the rustic is again on the point of civil struggle.
Jason Patinkin (Voice Of The united states) by means of Wikimedia Commons
Eric, from the South Sudan state of Jap Equatoria, misplaced his father when he was once ten. His father was once a reasonably rich guy however after his demise, that wealth was once handed directly to Eric’s uncles on his father’s facet, slightly than his mom or her 3 co-wives. (The custom of inheritance passing to male kin is reflective of girls’s loss of financial independence in rural South Sudan.)
Eric was once then required to recognize his uncles as stepfathers as they was the de facto authority over his mom, her co-wives and their youngsters. Because the oldest son, he persisted years of beatings from his stepfathers, in addition to witnessing violence through them towards his mom.
Upon achieving maturity, Eric mentioned he realised he was once in a position to flee the “catastrophic mistreatment from his stepfathers” and had to “adventure” for his personal survival. Alternatively, because of meals shortages, survival supposed enticing in farm animals raiding.
On his first raid, his “warrior group” secured a herd of farm animals through killing the farm animals proprietor. Eric was once granted 4 cows – however with the exception of one, those needed to be passed over to his stepfathers. As he defined:
On my arrival, folks in my village have been excited to look me again with none accidents and I introduced those cows. On [the] spot, my stepfathers took them. As in [the] tradition of Toposa, the rest out of your enemies belongs to elder folks. I used to be handiest left with one cow.
On his 2nd raid, Eric secured 30 goats, of which his stepfathers allowed him to stay ten.
Acutely aware of the struggling that this raiding had led to and now with a longtime popularity as a “warrior”, Eric then stepped again from raiding and used the 10 goats to reproduce extra. This gave him the assets for marriage and to start out a circle of relatives – however he carried the legacy of his involvement within the killings throughout previous raids, and the data that he was once now a goal for retaliatory violence. He defined:
To this point, I’ve killed six enemies; therefore am additionally incorporated as a warrior in my network. I don’t need them [the enemy] to understand my title as a result of they’ll kill me in the event that they know me.
For Eric and plenty of different males like him in South Sudan, it’s tricky to turn feelings similar to unhappiness or worry, as this might be interpreted as an indication of weak spot. Our researcher and interviewer, Anna Adiyo Sebit, describes the expectancies put on males in her tradition: “As a man, even when someone dies, you do not shed a tear, especially in front of women. Instead, you cry from your heart inside.”
The trauma of struggle
Ten years in the past, whilst undertaking fieldwork in Nepal for my PhD and e book, I interviewed greater than 60 former contributors of the Folks’s Liberation Military (PLA) to inspect how their participation within the civil struggle – referred to as the Folks’s Conflict – affected notions of masculinity inside the armed crew.
Whilst I by no means requested about trauma or mental difficulties, it was transparent those have been provide for most of the males – simply by no means explicitly spoken about. As an alternative, they’d speak about their sense of disillusionment or loss of skill to fulfil societal expectancies of masculinity – all of the whilst, sparsely maintaining their feelings in take a look at.
Those feelings would handiest floor in additional informal conversations over tea or meals, following the formal interviews. In those moments, the lads published a extra prone facet – incessantly expressing unhappiness, frustration, and a need to proportion their extra private tales.
It was once a transparent shift from the shows of hardened masculinity of their narratives of the battlefield. A few of these casual exchanges hinted at indicators of PTSD – as an example, of their descriptions of flashbacks, sleep difficulties and quick temperedness. One younger guy who was once extraordinarily well mannered and courteous was very fidgety after the top of the interview. He advised me: “In the night I can’t sleep, because I hear bomb blasts inside my head.”
Every other, obviously pleased with his function within the Folks’s Conflict, recounted his bravery at the battlefield. But, when he spoke of the six months of torture he had persisted in police custody, his composure faltered and he struggled to carry again tears. He confirmed me a photograph of his three-year-old kid, announcing: “This is why I will never return to battle.”
Contributors of the Folks’s Liberation Military in Nepal, 2008.
Jonathan Alpeyrie by means of Wikimedia Commons
What I encountered was once males who gave the impression uneasy about expressing feelings as this runs opposite to masculine expectancies, however have been additionally annoyed at a loss of shops to inform their tale.
All through one interview with a former PLA member within the western district of Bardiya, I realized a gaggle of ex-PLA warring parties collected on the boundary of his house once they had heard an interview was once happening. As my interpreter and I have been leaving, a skinny guy on the entrance of the group started shouting aggressively at us.
Having to start with assumed his anger was once directed at my presence within the house, I realised it stemmed from his frustration at no longer being decided on for an interview. “Why does everyone always want to interview you?” he shouted on the guy I had simply spoken to. The previous fighter’s anger, fuelled through alcohol, gave the impression to mirror his frustration at missing a platform to proportion his personal tale.
From Nepal in 2016 to South Sudan in 2024, amid the violence and trauma of struggle and the day-to-day expectancies of masculinity related to being a supplier and protector, there gave the impression to be few shops wherein those males may just communicate freely about their feelings, inform their tales, and admit their psychological well being difficulties.
Most of the males interviewed in South Sudan were fascinated by violent clashes involving killings one day of their lives. In interviews performed in Kapoeta North, a county in jap Equatoria, some males reported having consistent flashbacks to the sounds of gunshots – once they attempted to sleep at evening, those sounds would “become real”, preventing them getting any correct relaxation:
Occasionally you’ll get up in the course of the evening and to find your self trembling as though those persons are coming for you.
One guy defined how he would rise up within the evening to practice a “black shadow” like a ghost. When network contributors would run after him to forestall him, he would transform “hostile and behave like he wants to kill everyone” – as a result of, he defined, he noticed his good friend being killed at the battlefield and the reminiscence of this might no longer go away him, particularly within the evening.
A lady described how, when younger males are fascinated by “killing”, their “mind is not functioning well”. Contextualising this declare she defined: “There was this man who got traumatised due to the ongoing conflict of raiding. He fought many battles until the gunshot sound affected his brain and made him crazy.”
She then described a person who may just no longer settle for his good friend had died in a farm animals camp raid and insisted on returning to the battlefield, even supposing the network advised him to not. “After confirming [his friend’s death] he ran mad and became confused. We say that such a person had his heart broken by the incident he witnessed, and we say he is mad.”
Males whose partners had been killed can transform fixated on revenge, as Sebit explains, “It will torture their mind until they go and avenge the death of the person that was killed.” Some will inspire them to take revenge however others, like Lokwi, are looking to discourage revenge killings and dealing against non violent solution of disputes thru discussion.
Societal expectancies of masculinity
The hyperlink between societal expectancies of masculinity, trauma and violent behaviour amongst males is vital in higher working out ongoing insecurities in rural South Sudan. A person is meant to possess cows with a view to acquire recognize from their network. With out those, they may be able to be rejected – resulting in emotions of isolation, depression and an apprehension of ridicule.
As famous through some other aged interviewee: “If a man does not go for raiding, he will be cursed by elders. [In contrast], if he comes back with cows, people will celebrate – and if he dies, people will say he died as a warrior.”
It may be a vicious circle. If you don’t get cows while you raid some other network, this may occasionally result in additional emotions of disgrace – using the younger males to place themselves at additional threat. In a state of rigidity and having grown up in a tradition of clash, they are going to regard themselves as having no selection however to threat demise within the quest for cows. Those that had been orphaned or do not need different members of the family to toughen them may also be specifically at risk of this.
A tender boy brandishes an immitation pistol manufactured from dust in South Sudan’s capital, Juba.
Richard Juilliart/Shutterstock
Such considerations about masculinity emerge in most of the interviews with younger males in South Sudan – and likewise in discussions with toughen staff there. Catholic Aid Services and products (CRS) is among the few organisations in South Sudan who’ve run trauma consciousness coaching for males. A neighborhood CRS programme supervisor, Luol, defined to me in a web-based assembly how males’s worries about marriage rights can spiral into acts of violence:
What’s in fact going down in [young men’s] brains is they’re considering: ‘Okay, I am 18 or 17 years old now, in the next two years I have to have my partner at home, but I don’t have assets. [So] the easiest way to get assets is to raid or thieve folks’s homes.’ That is the considering of struggle. That is the considering of an individual who has been uncovered to clash – that the easiest way to get assets is to raid from someone.
In some other assembly, Luol described his enjoy of facilitating trauma consciousness programmes with males. He defined that “many of the men have participated in cattle raiding and have seen horrific kinds of events such as, seeing somebody [being] killed, and [they] can be traumatised because [they] participated in that war [raid].”
Luol described one younger guy who got here and spoke to him after the primary day of coaching:
He sought after to testify that he’s now recuperating from his trauma as a result of he participated within the struggle and he noticed youngsters and girls being killed and when he returned house, he noticed [in] his personal youngsters, the youngsters who have been killed, and he cried, he felt ashamed for taking part and enjoying a component on this. And he was once looking to get better from that impact of trauma. And that’s quite common. Lots of the younger males who take part in struggle come again traumatised.
The significance of such shops for males to come back and communicate in combination about their feelings was once emphasized in our assembly. For cultural causes, neither particular person counselling classes nor classes together with girls could be appropriate to the lads.As famous through some other native CRS personnel member :
If girls are in that crew, the lads are most likely no longer to speak about [trauma] as a result of masculinity problems. They don’t need the ladies to listen to males accepting weak spot or vulnerability … But when the lads are speaking on my own [about] their lifestyles they’ll say: ‘Yes, this is what happened to me, and this is how we can move forward.’
Whilst those classes aren’t intended to be a type of restorative justice or “amnesty” for crimes dedicated, Luol defined that opening up about emotions of guilt within the small crew is useful in addressing “displaced anger” that may manifest in endured violence locally, extended family or within the circle of relatives.
CRS Trauma Consciousness and Social Concord programmes additionally inspire discussions of choices to violence or farm animals raiding, presenting a longer-term lifestyles imaginative and prescient for the ones provide. In keeping with one attendee, his much less traumatised mind permits for rational considering similar to: “If I start cultivating this year and I want to marry in two or three years’ time, I’ll be able to produce the crops, sell them in the market, and then buy cows if I need to buy cows.”
The programme was once piloted in South Sudan’s Higher Jonglei State in 2014 the use of CRS non-public investment. 3 years later it secured investment from USAID after “demonstrating its value”. In 2020, with further investment from the EU, the programme was once expanded to spaces of Jap Equatoria. Whilst the programme has now ended with the of entirety of its investment cycle, CRS continues to hunt long term investment to re-establish the initiative.
Squaddies have fun the anniversary of South Sudan’s independence day, which in brief introduced peace.
Richard Juilliart/Shutterstock
‘Everything gets destroyed’
Whilst recognising that the majority males don’t have interaction in violence, the truth is males are overwhelmingly chargeable for violence when it does happen. That is the case in South Sudan as in all nations. It’s due to this fact necessary to interact with males, no longer simply as perpetrators of violence however as doable peacemakers.
Sadly, gender stereotyping inside the humanitarian and donor sector has led to a loss of trauma reaction centered at males. As an alternative, males and boys have a tendency to be framed as perpetual perpetrators of violence and discrimination – as “emasculated troublemakers” no longer price enticing with, or at easiest through the “men can cope by themselves” narrative.
Wider analysis through XCEPT has discovered that out of 12 humanitarian organisations interviewed in northern Syria, northern Iraq and South Sudan, handiest two had programmes in particular centered at males. The placement seems little modified from the realization reached within the 2021 Promondo record, which said:
This de-prioritisation of boys and males in emergency reaction is rooted in donors’ and world organisations’ loss of political will to meaningfully recognize that vulnerability exists past girls and women … Persistent inattention to boys and males has led to techniques, services and products and areas no longer being sufficiently adapted to satisfy their wishes.
This no longer handiest has an have an effect on on males and boys’ wellbeing. It additionally fails to tackle board the truth that unaddressed trauma amongst males correlates with will increase in network violence, revenge killings, farm animals raiding and gender-based violence suffered through girls and women. As a world CRS personnel member defined:
Except donors have some way of dealing with [the reality of trauma] and addressing it in all interventions, all of the cash we’re spending on well being techniques and infrastructure techniques and teaching programs and no matter it’s, it’s simply cash down the drain. As a result of ultimately, the entirety will get destroyed in violence.
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