South Sudan is approaching 22 December 2026 with an election calendar, but without the institutional architecture capable of safely carrying the country through an election. The danger is not merely that an election could be disputed. The greater danger is that an election could become the trigger that connects South Sudan’s already-burning political, military, communal, territorial, and constitutional fault lines into one national conflagration. This is not an argument against elections. It is an argument against reckless elections without the institutions necessary to make defeat survivable and victory legitimate.
The National Elections Commission (NEC) has confirmed 22 December 2026 as the election date and has announced the use of geographical constituencies based on the 2010 boundaries. Yet the election preparations remain burdened by outstanding questions concerning voter registration, civic education, election security, the census, and other transitional benchmarks. The international community should therefore stop only asking, “Can South Sudan hold elections?” The more important question is: “What happens to South Sudan the morning after an election whose result is rejected by powerful political, military and communal actors?” That is where the real danger lies.
The country is already sitting on multiple fuses
South Sudan is not entering the electoral season as a peaceful constitutional democracy. Intercommunal violence is raging and constantly reported across Warrap, Lakes, Jonglei, Eastern Equatoria, Unity, Abyei and Upper Nile, driven by revenge killings, cattle raiding, political influence and competition over natural resources. Human Rights Watch has documented the continuing escalation of these conflicts. Moreover, the territorial disputes are not theoretical. In the Warrap–Lakes–Unity tri-state area, disputes over grazing land, cattle, and boundaries have already produced deadly violence. UN reporting has specifically identified tensions between the Luanyjang and Pakam communities around Maper along the Warrap–Lakes boundary.
In the Ruweng–Unity area, the Panakuac or Abiemnom–Pariang corridor remains a serious territorial fault line, involving land, oil infrastructure, and competing administrative claims. The Small Arms Survey has documented how control of this territory effectively divided Ruweng geographically. In Jonglei, the dispute over Biothagany, involving communities from Twic East and Duk, demonstrates how even a small island in the Sudd can become a deadly question of ownership.
In Western Equatoria, the unresolved tensions between Azande and Balanda communities, particularly around Tambura, have repeatedly generated violence and displacement. In Eastern Equatoria, border tensions have already demonstrated how quickly a local territorial disagreement can become an international security incident. In 2025 and 2026, Ugandan and South Sudanese forces exchanged fire over a disputed border area, with both sides claiming the location belonged to them.
And beyond South Sudan’s internal boundaries lie unresolved international questions, including Abyei, the Ilemi Triangle, and other sections of the Sudan–South Sudan frontier. The World Bank notes that the Abyei dispute remains fragile and that other disputed Sudan–South Sudan border areas remain unresolved; it also reports that more than two-thirds of the South Sudan–Kenya border is disputed in the Ilemi Triangle. These disputes may survive an ordinary political season. They may not survive an election that turns territorial ownership into electoral ownership.
When the ballot box becomes a border marker
In a country where political representation is geographically organized, an electoral constituency is not merely a line on a map. To many communities, it can determine who governs, who collects revenue, who controls land, who appoints local officials, and whose historical claim receives political recognition. Therefore, holding elections in disputed territories without first creating credible mechanisms for resolving those disputes risks transforming the ballot box into a weapon.
A polling station placed in a contested area can be interpreted as recognition of one claimant. A voter register can be interpreted as demographic evidence. A constituency boundary can be interpreted as a territorial settlement. An electoral victory can then be interpreted not merely as a political victory, but as ownership of the land itself. That is how a political dispute becomes a territorial war.
The military question is even more dangerous
The R-ARCSS envisioned a unified, professional national security sector. Yet the implementation of the Transitional Security Arrangements has repeatedly fallen behind, and RJMEC has reported that renewed fighting has eroded earlier progress toward unification and deployment of forces. This is the fundamental contradiction: South Sudan is preparing to conduct a national election while its security architecture remains deeply fragmented.
Reports and political allegations of recruitment and military mobilization ahead of the elections must therefore be treated with the utmost seriousness and independently verified, not because every allegation is necessarily true, but because even the perception that one party is preparing armed forces to secure an electoral victory can itself provoke counter-mobilization.
If government-aligned forces are perceived as partisan election guardians while opposition forces and community-based armed groups remain outside a genuinely unified national command, the election ceases to be a competition between political programmes. It becomes a contest over who commands the guns after the votes are counted. That is an extremely dangerous contest.
The real nightmare is not election day
The real nightmare begins after the declaration of results. Suppose an opposition candidate rejects the result. Suppose an independent candidate alleges manipulation. Suppose a governor loses an election and refuses to surrender power. Suppose a community rejects constituency boundaries. Suppose displaced citizens contest voter registration. Suppose a court annuls a result and the executive refuses to enforce the judgment. Suppose the National Elections Commission declares one winner while a powerful political faction declares another.
The pertinent question that we must bear in mind is: where does the dispute go? To an independent court? To an impartial electoral tribunal? To a professional national army? Or ultimately to the streets, the cattle camps and the battlefields? That is the question the international community must answer before the election, not after the first bodies fall.
The R-ARCSS originally contemplated an impartial NEC and elections conducted under a permanent constitutional framework. It also explicitly linked reconstruction, repatriation, resettlement and reintegration of displaced persons and returnees to peacebuilding and elections. Those safeguards cannot be treated as decorative paperwork.
A partisan election commission is a national fire hazard
An electoral commission does not need to actually rig an election to destroy public confidence. It only needs to be perceived as incapable of impartiality. If candidates do not trust the NEC, they will distrust the results. If they distrust the results and cannot trust the courts, they will seek alternative means of resolving the dispute. That is precisely how fragile democracies collapse. South Sudan therefore needs an electoral commission that is demonstrably independent, adequately funded, technically competent, and protected from political and military interference. The Security Council reporting has already highlighted severe financial constraints and political obstacles surrounding the electoral preparations.
The courts must be the bridge, not another battleground
A credible election requires more than voting. It requires credible remedies. Every candidate must know beforehand where an electoral dispute will be filed, within what period, before which tribunal, under what evidentiary rules, with what right of appeal, and with what mechanism for enforcing the final judgment. Without those safeguards, an election petition becomes another political battlefield. A defeated candidate who believes there is no meaningful judicial remedy may conclude that the law has closed its door. When the door of law closes, the door of violence opens.
Land disputes can turn electoral defeat into existential conflict
This is why disputes from Cueibet, Maper, Panakuac, Abiemnom, Pariang, Biothagany, Tambura, Abyei, Ilemi and the Uganda–South Sudan border areas, among others, must not be dismissed as ordinary local disputes. They are potentially electoral disputes waiting to happen. The same communities that currently fight over grazing corridors, fishing grounds, administrative boundaries and ancestral territories may be asked to accept an electoral map that appears to determine political ownership of those territories. That is a dangerous experiment. Do not draw electoral boundaries across unresolved territorial wounds and then pretend the ballot paper will heal them.
The region will not remain a spectator
If South Sudan collapses electorally, neighbouring countries will not simply watch. Uganda will be concerned about refugee flows, cross-border insecurity, trade corridors and its own territorial security. Kenya will confront refugee, financial, commercial and border-security consequences, particularly around the Ilemi region and the northern frontier. Sudan, already engulfed in its own devastating war, will face additional pressure around oil infrastructure, border communities, refugees and cross-border armed movements. The internationalization of a South Sudanese electoral crisis would therefore be almost unavoidable. Unfortunately, intervention after mass violence is always more expensive than prevention before violence.
Do not wait for the cannibalism of politics to become literal
The Central African Republic provides a chilling illustration of how sectarian violence can destroy ordinary human restraints. During the 2014 Bangui violence, Ouandja Magloire, known as “Mad Dog,” publicly described eating part of a Muslim victim as an act of revenge after the killing of family members. Such acts were exceptional and should never be presented as representative of an entire community, but they demonstrate how revenge, dehumanization, and mob violence can push individuals beyond previously unimaginable boundaries.
South Sudan must not wait until revenge becomes so normalized that yesterday’s unthinkable becomes tomorrow’s battlefield practice. Human beings without hope can become destructive. Communities without justice can become vengeful. Armed politics without institutions can become genocidal. This is not prophecy, but it is a warning.
The international community must act before the explosion
The African Union, IGAD, United Nations, neighbouring states and international partners should insist on measurable safeguards before the election, which include: a genuinely independent and adequately funded electoral commission; transparent electoral boundary verification and publication; a credible mechanism for resolving internal land and administrative disputes;
A professional, unified and politically neutral national security sector; a clear, rapid and enforceable procedures for presidential, gubernatorial and legislative election petitions; protection of opposition parties, independent candidates, journalists and civil society; an agreed security protocol preventing partisan deployment of armed forces during the electoral process; Protection of IDPs and returnees from electoral and land-related exclusion; independent domestic and international election observation; and a binding political agreement that all parties will accept judicially determined electoral outcomes.
Civil society and traditional authorities also have a crucial role. Community chiefs, churches, women’s groups, youth leaders, and local peace committees have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to mediate local conflicts and develop early-warning mechanisms. UNMISS has supported community protection structures and local peace initiatives, including in Greater Pibor and Western Equatoria. But local mediation cannot substitute for national institutions.
The choice is still South Sudan’s
South Sudan does not need another election merely because the calendar says December 22, 2026. It needs an election that survives the election. The world should understand the distinction. An election can produce a government. A credible election produces legitimacy. A rushed election can produce a winner. A credible election produces losers who are willing to go home, and that is the ultimate test.
If South Sudan conducts elections while land disputes remain combustible, international borders remain contested, the security sector remains fragmented, electoral institutions lack universal confidence, judicial remedies remain uncertain, and political competitors believe that losing means political extinction, then the country will not be voting for democracy. It will be voting on a powder keg.
South Sudan’s tragedy must not become another international report written after the bodies are counted. The warning is being issued now: Do not wait for the first bullet, the first burned village, the first mass displacement, or the first retaliatory massacre to discover that the election was never institutionally ready. Peace must come before political arithmetic. Institutions must come before ballots. Justice must come before victory. Otherwise, 22 December 2026 may become not the date South Sudan entered democracy, but the date its unresolved wars found a new battlefield.
The writer is a South Sudanese constitutional lawyer, academic, and political figure. He studied law at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. He is an independent legal researcher and constitutional expert and serves as a lecturer and Deputy Dean of the College of Law at Starford International University in Juba. He is also a member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO).
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.
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