I have read Michael Gorjin Kuol’s “Investing in Sustainable Peace: Advancing Peace and Security in South Sudan” with interest. His emphasis on grassroots reconciliation, early-warning systems, women’s cooperatives, trauma healing and youth participation is valuable. However, his argument leaves the most dangerous elephant in the room largely unaddressed: South Sudan’s peace problem is not merely a grassroots problem; it is fundamentally an institutional and constitutional problem at the summit of the state.
I therefore respectfully disagree with the suggestion that South Sudan can achieve sustainable peace simply by moving beyond elite political agreements. We cannot treat the fever while leaving the disease in the bloodstream. Communities are not manufacturing the national political crisis in isolation. Weak institutions, personalised power, militarised politics, patronage and the absence of effective accountability descend from the centre and eventually manifest themselves in communities across the country.
Grassroots peacebuilding is necessary, but grassroots peace without national institutional reform is like repairing the roof while the foundation is collapsing. A community may reconcile over cattle, land or revenge killings today, only for national political competition tomorrow to reopen the same wounds through mobilisation, patronage and armed networks.
This is precisely why the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) cannot simply be dismissed as another elite political deal. It was designed as a bridge between the top and the bottom: power-sharing at the national level, security-sector transformation, institutional reform, transitional justice, constitutional reform, devolution, public participation and, ultimately, elections.
Chapter VI expressly envisages a permanent Constitution founded on federalism, democracy, constitutionalism, the rule of law, national unity, devolution of powers and resources, respect for ethnic and regional diversity, and popular participation.
The uncomfortable truth is that South Sudan has repeatedly tried to manufacture peace without first building the institutions capable of sustaining it. That is why personalities become stronger than institutions, political loyalty becomes more valuable than the law, public resources become instruments of patronage, and national politics repeatedly acquire tribal, sectional and regional dimensions.
We should therefore stop pretending that politicians can be separated from their communities as though they exist in a political vacuum. In South Sudan, political elites frequently remain important ethnic and regional gatekeepers. If the political centre is unstable, the grassroots will inevitably feel the tremor.
The correct approach is therefore neither “top-down” nor “bottom-up” in isolation. It is top-down institutional stabilisation that creates the conditions for bottom-up peacebuilding, combined with grassroots participation that feeds back into national legitimacy.
That is the architecture the R-ARCSS was attempting to create. Its constitutional provisions expressly connect peace and stability with democratic government, devolution, public participation and a permanent constitutional order. Its security arrangements seek to transform the security sector rather than merely negotiate temporary tranquillity.
The African Union, as recently as August 2026, called for full implementation of the R-ARCSS and an inclusive dialogue while addressing the transition and elections. This should remind us that the Agreement is not simply a document for distributing offices among politicians; it is also an unfinished institutional programme for reconstructing the state.
My greatest concern with approaches that speak of “sustainable peace” while placing constitutional transformation in the background is that they risk trying to democratise the village while leaving the national political marketplace untouched. We cannot ask citizens to reconcile at the cattle camp while the national system remains incapable of guaranteeing accountable government, lawful transfers of power, impartial security institutions, equitable distribution of resources and constitutional protection for every community.
South Sudan does not primarily suffer from a shortage of peace conferences, workshops, specialists, theories or foreign-funded frameworks. We suffer from a shortage of functioning institutions and political fidelity to the rules we have already agreed upon.
The permanent Constitution is therefore not an academic luxury to be postponed until after elections. It is part of the architecture of peace itself. The R-ARCSS envisages a people-led constitutional process precisely because South Sudan needs a constitutional settlement capable of answering questions that guns and political appointments cannot answer: Who governs? Under what limits? How is power transferred? Who controls public resources? How are powers devolved? How are communities protected? And what happens when those in power violate the law?
So, yes, let us invest in grassroots peace. Let communities reconcile, let women organise, let young people participate, let technology strengthen early warning, and let traditional and faith leaders help heal wounded societies. But let us not build a beautiful grassroots house on a rotten national foundation.
My position is simple: South Sudan needs peace from the top that creates the space for peace from the bottom, and peace from the bottom that gives legitimacy to peace at the top. Anything less is not a comprehensive peace strategy; it is another cycle of treating symptoms while preserving the machinery that produces the disease.
Until we fix the system, we will continue changing the actors while preserving the theatre. And South Sudan has suffered enough from rehearsing peace without ever repairing the stage on which the war keeps returning.
The writer, Juol Nhomngek Daniel, 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.
and then