XCEPT is pleased to launch a new collection of research exploring how decentralisation and identity politics are reshaping governance and legitimacy in Sudan and South Sudan. Produced by leading researchers with deep regional expertise, these studies offer timely insights into how power is negotiated, contested, and reimagined in both countries.
Arabic translations of the summaries are available in the publication’s page.
About the Research
This collection includes three original studies:
Public webinar
To mark the launch of the collection, XCEPT will host a public webinar on 23 October 2025 at 14:00 BST, featuring authors Awet Weldemichael, Nicki Kindersley, Amar Jamal, and Machot Amoum Malou in conversation. The panel will explore how decentralisation and identity politics are reshaping governance and legitimacy in Sudan and South Sudan.
In the last twenty years, a rapid succession of crises—floods, droughts, rebellions, and national wars in Sudan and South Sudan—have been capitalised on by commercial investors working with both state-allied and private security partners. These corporate interests have built a cheap and mobile waged labor force through layers of rents, taxes, fees and debts. This growing cash labor market securitises oilfields, farms, mines, businesses and compounds that stretch along the disputed national border between Sudan and South Sudan. In the center of this long border lies the oilfield state of Unity in South Sudan, which borders the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. Both regions now fall under a patchwork of armed authorities’ zones of control. These authorities remain relatively fixed despite the spreading frontiers of the war in Sudan since 2023 and the fragmentation of the South Sudan state, because they are rooted in military-commercial empires built since the wars of the 1990s.
To understand the dynamics of this military-commercial economy and the class stratification and labor relationships it generates, Marko and Manal spent a month travelling across this landscape in sustained conversations with its workers. This short intervention makes three arguments. First, we should understand pollution and (increasingly regular) climate disasters as part of the coercive arsenal of governing authorities in post-statist neoliberal borderlands like this one. Second, these authorities are interested in creating “labor traps” within their toxic geographies to capture cheap or free productive and social-reproductive labor (following Spiegel et al. 2023; Scott and Rye 2025). Third, creating this captive depressed market strengthens opportunities for the regional and international extraction of corporate profit.
Environmental coercion
In the last six years, climate change-related flooding events and extractive pollution have accelerated on the borderland between Sudan and South Sudan. Massive flooding has become an annual disaster, especially in the Rubkona area and across refugee camps in Ruweng in 2021, and across the whole region in 2022. The borders and Nuba mountains suffered a deeply destructive drought in 2023 followed almost immediately by massive flooding across the whole region as well as widespread locust destruction in the mountains; 2024 brought another year of widespread flooding. Repeated oil pipeline disruptions have created localized pumping and storage crises. This oil pollution, as well as cyanide waste from gold mining in the Nuba Mountains, has been carried further afield by increasingly wide flooding.
Public authorities use the region’s repeated environmental disasters as a tool in local government—in mobilizing communities against each other—and in economic control, driving people into refugee camps, towns and commercial farms for safety and job-seeking. This is a common logic of regional war tactics: like the Sudan Government’s bombardment of the Nuba Mountains from 2013, the South Sudan Government’s wars in Unity State in 2014-2017 and 2019-2022 aimed at destroying the socio-economic base of perceived opposition areas through the wholesale destruction of farms and herds. Climate change-induced floodings (controlled in part by decisions over where dykes and levees are built) are a cheaper method of population control than full military operations, but achieve the same ends: impoverishing perceived opposition strongholds and creating new displaced settlements of desperate workers.
Labor traps
War, floods, droughts, pollution and inflation are all economically productive for governing authorities because they create useful immobility, trapping people into urbanization, encampment, and market dependency. Governing authorities and their commercial partners have benefited from the urbanization of a large number of desperate people seeking rented homes and any work going. The region’s international and internal borders are not technically “closed,” but fees and taxes levied by a plethora of military and civil authorities at checkpoints are both immediate local authority revenues and create high costs of movement, making better-paid migrant work options north and south too expensive to access, especially for women.
This labor entrapment has provided significant opportunities for regional investors to build an extractive commercial economy based on rent monopolies and cheap labor costs. Members of the military-political classes running government and army systems in this region—many since the 1990s—have invested in long-term warehousing and domestic rental units, commercial agricultural and extractives projects, private transport and security companies. On the other hand, repeated losses from conflict and environmental disasters have undermined middle-class and working-class abilities to reconstruct and re-invest. This has generated the possibility of monopolies alongside rapid vertical class stratification, where a much smaller class of wealthy entrepreneurs compete to consolidate corporate and administrative controls that allow them to invest, selectively tax, suppress wages, and control population movements (see also Pattenden 2024 and Martiniello 2019, both on Uganda). This has created a market for very low-paid piecework and self-employed market supply work, including providing transport and food services. Human labor is now cheaper than renting transport: in the 2023 dry season, some Mayom traders hired women to carry goods to Rubkona, over at least 80 kilometres, instead of renting a truck.
Extraction and corporate profit
Ordinary workers are fully aware of these dynamics of class construction and exploitation. In our research, we gathered songs—written predominantly by women, including by famous female songwriters—that explicitly set out the analysis we presented above. Esteemed songwriter Elizabeth Nyaduiy Bidiet articulated the sense of broken vertical relationships and the abrogation of wealthy responsibilities in crises in a recent song: “the daughter of Mr. Mading doesn’t bother with us, because people greet only those with big buttocks [Neer ke ni ram mi te ke wuoth: only those with big buttocks are greeted or respected]. Then I ask: where will those with no buttocks go to?”
These conditions are dangerous for people to live and work in, with few rights and little recourse. This captive market, which continues to provide opportunities for enclosure and rent extraction, provides its monopoly capitalists with high returns at low cost. Securitisation of these zones of profit—the oilfields, farms, mines, markets, compounds, and transport systems that stretch across the borderland—is made cheap through the instrumentalization of climate change patterns and securitised corridors of (im)mobility.
This article originally appeared in American Ethnologist.
Martiniello, Giuliano. 2019. “Social Conflict and Agrarian Change in Uganda’s Countryside.” Journal of Agrarian Change 19 (3): 550–68. .
Pattenden, Jonathan. 2024. “Exploitation, Patriarchy and Petty Commodity Production: Class, Gender and Neocolonialism in Rural Eastern Uganda.” Review of African Political Economy 51 (May): 16–41.
Scott, Sam, and Johan Fredrik Rye. 2025. “The Mobility–Immobility Dynamic and the ‘Fixing’ of Migrants’ Labour Power.” Critical Sociology 51 (1): 71–86.
Spiegel, Samuel J., Lameck Kachena, and Juliet Gudhlanga. 2023. “Climate Disasters, Altered Migration and Pandemic Shocks: (Im)Mobilities and Interrelated Struggles in a Border Region.” Mobilities 18 (2): 328–47.
Our research assistants were Linda Madeng Gatduel, Nyaphean Phan Char, Bisal Hassan, Razaz Juma and Gisma Yousif.
As a researcher, you often read about conflict from a distance. You hear stories, collect data, and listen to people recount their experiences, usually after the worst of the violence has passed. Conflict becomes something abstract, something you analyse. Most researchers don’t plan to be in the middle of it while conducting fieldwork.
Moyale is a town of around 34,000 people, located atop an escarpment that rises abruptly amidst the low rocky hills and brushland that characterise the area. The Kenyan-Ethiopian border runs through the town, with one of Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s major border crossings located in the centre of the town, along a key highway that also serves as Moyale’s main thoroughfare.
One morning in early March 2024, during my field research, my field coordinator and I were preparing to visit a nearby village to meet with a local women’s group. The plan was to spend the day hearing from women about their experiences, their roles in the community, and their aspirations for peace in an area that hasn’t always experienced it. But the day took a sharp turn.
We received word that the meeting would have to be cancelled. Violent clashes at a number of gold mines had broken out in Dabel, a region in Marsabit County, Kenya (of which Moyale is the largest town) and several victims were being brought to Moyale for medical treatment. Moyale’s previously calm atmosphere shifted instantly. My field coordinator, a member of the Gabbra community, started receiving urgent phone calls. Tensions were rising rapidly between the Gabbra and the Borana, the two dominant communities in Marsabit.
Uncertain of how events would unfold, we stayed put. In situations like these, the safest course of action is to follow the guidance of local partners who know the terrain, the networks, and the dynamics better than anyone. One of the first people we contacted was Rahma, a local peacebuilder and a respected leader in her community.
She was composed but serious. She immediately updated us on what was happening: the violence in Dabel had triggered a ripple of anxiety in Moyale, and tensions were threatening to spill across the border into Ethiopia, as they had previously. “No one wants Moyale to burn again,” she said, referring to violent clashes in 2012 between the Boranna and Garri communities. That violence, which began as a dispute over land use and grazing rights, killed 18, displaced around 20,000 from Ethiopia into Kenya, and garnered international attention.
When I asked how her local peacebuilding organisation group were responding, Rahma spoke with quiet determination. The first step, she explained, was to alert the elders from both communities. “When the elders speak, people listen,” she said. Her team had already reached out to them, urging them to call for calm and prevent any escalation. Simultaneously, they were supporting those injured in the clashes who had been brought into town, ensuring they had access to basic care and support.
But Rahma’s work didn’t stop there. She had begun visiting families of the victims, offering solidarity, helping them process what was happening, and quietly gathering information. She and her team were also sending alerts to women on the Ethiopian side of Moyale, warning them of potential escalation. This early warning system, built on personal relationships, is often the difference between violence being contained or spreading further.
In those tense hours, I witnessed first-hand an often opaque and unacknowledged process of local, women-led peacebuilding. It was happening in real time: the phone calls, the home visits, the coordination between elders, youth, and women’s groups. The effort to prevent the spread of violence wasn’t being led by armed actors or official peace envoys; it was being led by women like Rahma, who, in the absence of formal authority, exert extraordinary influence through relational leadership, local knowledge, and moral authority.
This experience reshaped how I understand peacebuilding. It is not a grand event or a signed document; it is often the quiet work done by those with the most to lose. It is those without official standing, often women, who issue early warnings, who offer first response, who try to ease tensions, and try to prevent a spark from turning into a fire.
The bigger picture: women’s peace work in policy and practice
Rahma’s story is not unique, and that’s exactly the point. Across the Horn of Africa, and indeed globally, women have long been central to informal peacebuilding networks, particularly in borderland and conflict-prone regions where formal institutions often falter. omen play a crucial role in providing early warnings of conflict by alerting the appropriate community actors. In Moyale, women frequently cross the border into Ethiopia for routine activities such as trade, visiting relatives, or participating in cultural events. This regular cross-border movement, combined with their cultural fluency, enables them to pick up on subtle signs of tension whether these be unusual gatherings, atypical livestock movements, or murmurs of grievances that may signal emerging conflict. This early warning function is not limited solely to cross-border threats; it also applies to potential conflicts arising from interactions with different communities on the Kenyan side. Upon detecting these early signals, women promptly return to their communities to mobilize local peace committees and inform local leaders of potential flashpoints.
Their work, however, is consistently under-recognised, underfunded, and under-reported.
In my research across the borderlands of Kenya and Ethiopia, particularly in Moyale, I encountered this paradox repeatedly. Women like Rahma are doing the critical work of de-escalating violence, providing first response, and maintaining cross-border dialogue, yet they remain largely excluded from formal peacebuilding mechanisms. County-level peace committees and national dialogue platforms are overwhelmingly male-dominated. When women are included, it is often in token ways, lacking decision-making power or sustained institutional support. Increasing the number of women in country level governance positions and requiring gender balanced teams for new county-funded projects in this part of Kenya could help to address the gender imbalance in decision making.
The barriers to inclusion are as structural as they are cultural. Women’s groups in the region frequently lack consistent funding, safe spaces to convene, reliable transport to conflict-affected areas, and access to early warning information channels dominated by local government or security actors. In Moyale, for instance, women peacebuilders often rely on their personal networks, phones, ad hoc transportation, and informal clan ties to respond to crises. Yet these grassroots systems are fragile, stretched thin, and rarely acknowledged by formal actors who continue to see peacebuilding through a masculinised lens of negotiation, disarmament, or enforcement.
And yet, research continues to affirm that when women participate meaningfully in peace processes, outcomes are more durable and inclusive. The challenge is not simply to “add women” to existing peace structures, but to reimagine peacebuilding itself: to centre the relational, affective, and community-based forms of mediation that women are already practicing.
The XCEPT Research Fund is commissioning research that deepens our understanding of conflict-affected borderlands and how conflicts connect across borders, and the implications for peace and stability.
We are accepting proposals for research under the following themes; follow the links below to see further detail for each call for proposals.
Who should apply?
We are inviting proposals from both individual researchers and organisations, depending on the size and complexity of the project. Consortia and partnerships are also welcome to apply.
We strongly encourage applications from researchers and research organisations based in or from countries in the Global South, either independently or in collaboration with Global North partners. We also welcome interdisciplinary approaches and collaborations between academics and policy professionals.
Application process
The application process will vary slightly depending on the funding call:
We anticipate that most selected projects will begin in November or December 2025. Projects will generally run for 12 months.
Studies on local cross-border governance, however robust, may seem overly abstract when encountered in the form of a research report. This blog piece aims to counter such perceptions by demonstrating the relevancy of cross-border research. More specifically, it explains how, building on lessons learned from XCEPT-funded field research conducted between October 2023 and April 2024, Concordis International facilitated a series of peace conferences in 2025 between ethnic groups from the borderlands of South Darfur (Sudan) and the Central African Republic (CAR).[1]
At the time of the XCEPT research, those interviewed—including Concordis staff—emphasised that the affected communities were keen to engage in such dialogue as a means of moving forward. That aspiration has now become a reality.
The town of Um Dafoug sits on the border between Sudan and CAR.[2] The residents of the town and its surrounding areas make their livings through a mix of trades, including the seasonal migration of livestock (transhumance), which involves multi-ethnic cattle and camel herders moving their livestock across the border in search of pasture.[3] Against this backdrop, unregulated, poorly negotiated transhumance is a key instigator of inter-communal tensions.
North of the border, the hawakeer system—which predates colonialism in Sudan and governs tribal land ownership rights throughout Darfur—has contributed to local grievances among those pastoralist communities granted fewer land rights.[4] Particularly problematic has been the re-demarcation of land boundaries under Sudan’s President Bashir (in power from 1989 to 2019), which effectively transferred areas of land between tribal groups, perpetuating and in some cases escalating cross-border disputes related to livelihoods. Thus, segments of land east of Um Dafoug, formerly owned by Taaisha settled communities, have now become part of the Falata tribe’s territory. Typically, clashes between Taaisha and Falata communities occur when transhumant Falata return from CAR to Sudan at the start of each rainy season.
With state and international actors largely absent, local customary and religious elites have been left to play a central governance role in the CAR–Sudan borderlands. As such, localised agreements governing cross-border relations and livelihoods are predominantly unwritten and highly informal. At the same time, a variety of community mechanisms exist to mitigate tensions between and among pastoralist and farming communities. Ultimately, the overarching aim of these informal local agreements is to ‘manage (local) disorder’ in the CAR–Sudan borderlands.[5]
In 2021, there were a series of violent clashes between the Falata and Taaisha communities. In the wake of this, grassroots-level figures have called for acknowledgement of, as well as reparations for, losses suffered—both historically and more recently. This is seen by both communities ‘as a prerequisite to move’ forward. Locally-led negotiations have left the issue of reparations unaddressed, focusing instead on a fragile cessation of direct hostilities and the resumption of daily activities.
In 2024, a delegation of Taaisha leaders undertook a reconciliatory visit to the town of Tullus on the Sudanese side of the border, territory largely associated with the Falata. This led to the delegation and 50 Falata leaders pledging ‘to put aside their past grievances and embark on a new chapter of peaceful coexistence, fostering harmony among all tribes residing in four localities: Tullus, Demso, Um Dafoug, and Rehaid Albirdi’. This coincided with the February 2024 return of Taaisha-looted cattle, facilitated by members of a local, Concordis-established Advisory Group in Um Dafoug. These events precipitated a commitment to engage in further joint dialogue, with the ultimate aim of establishing joint mechanisms to govern access to land.
The Head of the Advisory Group, Omda Al Habib Altegani Omer, emphasised a conference between the Falata and Taaisha tribes should take place as soon as possible.[6] As a consequence, and at the invitation of the communities, Concordis worked in and around Tullus, Demso, Um Dafoug, Rehaid Albirdi and a fifth locality, Um Dukhan, to identify leaders who could bring the wider Taaisha and Falata communities together to engage in constructive dialogue.
In April 2025, Concordis facilitated extensive meetings in Um Dafoug, laying the groundwork for a possible cross-border peace conference with communities from Vakaga in CAR. The process involved over 200 community stakeholders, including traditional leaders, women, youth, herders and farmers. Between them, the participants identified various factors exacerbating clashes between CAR communities and herders, including prolonged stays, armed robbery and environmental degradation.
The meetings revealed a strong desire among the community for structured agreements, shared early-warning systems and inclusive decision-making. Women demanded safe migration routes and participation in peace structures, while herders emphasized the need for access agreements and corridor protection. On April 13th, Concordis brought together 112 participants from the five Sudanese localities and two cross-border representatives from CAR for a four day peace conference in Um Dafoug. Conversations were widened to maximize the chances of reducing violence, killings and burning of villages, participants included Omdas and Nazir-level leaders representing ethnic groups including the Taaisha, Falata, Beni Halba, Masalit, and Barno, alongside women, youth, and traders.
The discussions addressed early cattle migration (Talaga), land use disputes and accountability for theft. The conference produced concrete outcomes. Local authorities committed to:
During the process, Concordis applied a number of learnings on cross-border governance agreements gleaned during XCEPT-funded research.[7] Of particular importance are the following:
The process has become a live example of translating research into tangible peace infrastructure, especially in borderland areas with little state presence.
[1] The XCEPT research was facilitated by European Union funding as part of the ‘Zones frontalières pacifiques et résilientes III’ action across CAR, Chad, Cameroon and Sudan.
[2] The settlement on the CAR side of the border is known as Am Dafok, while the settlement on the Sudanese side of the border is variously translated from the Arabic as Um Dafoug, Um Dafuq or Um Dafok. All refer to the same place.
[3] Louisa Lombard, ‘The Autonomous Zone Conundrum: Armed Conservation and Rebellion in North-Eastern CAR’, in Making Sense of the Central African Republic,eds. Tatiana Carayannis and Louisa Lombard, London: Zed Books, 2015; Stephen W. Smith, ‘CAR’s History: The Past of a Tense Present’, in Making Sense, Carayannis and Lombard, 40.
[4] See Mohamed Dawalbit, ‘Narratives that Drive Conflict – Unpacking the Term “Settler” and What it Means in Darfur’, The Conflict Sensitivity Facility, 6 February 2024. https://csf-sudan.org/settler-in-darfur/.
[5] Allard Duursma, ‘Making Disorder More Manageable: The Short-term Effectiveness of Local Mediation in Darfur’, Journal of Peace Research 58/3 (2021): 554–567; Jan Pospisi , ‘Dissolving Conflict. Local Peace Agreements and Armed Conflict Transitions’, Peacebuilding 10/2 (2022): 1–16.
[6] Advisory Group Work Plan, February 2025, available on request from [email protected].
[7] Concordis International, ed., Recognising the Local in Borderland Governance, London: Concordis International, 2025.
On 9 April 2025, two advertising billboards located on the road to Beirut airport were set on fire, just days after they had been installed.1 The billboards had displayed a Lebanese flag and the message ‘A New Era for Lebanon’ (عهد جديد للبنان), superimposed onto an aerial image of the Bay of Jounieh. The airport road runs through Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, and has long been adorned with posters commemorating Hezbollah and Lebanese resistance against Israel. Prior to the ‘New Era’ campaign, the same billboards had displayed posters celebrating Hezbollah’s former Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and former Head of the Executive Council Hashem Safieddine as martyrs, after their assassinations in Israeli airstrikes last year.
The agency which owns the billboards has not named the new campaign’s sponsor – although the ‘New Era’ slogan likely refers to a statement given by Joseph Aoun after he won Lebanon’s presidential election in January 2025 – and stated that the change in posters was not political. Rather, it was due to the expiry of the existing contract, dated one week after the funerals of Nasrallah and Safieddine in February. Nevertheless, the timing and placement of the new advertising campaign provoked strong reactions. Some viewed the transition as a ‘victory’ in ‘cleaning’ the airport roads of pro-Hezbollah messaging.2 For others, the move constituted an attempt to deny the realities of the ongoing conflict. As one Beirut resident reflected, ‘Why [A New Era for Lebanon]? They finally elected a prime minister, so what? What’s this future? As long as Israel exists in Lebanon, we won’t have a future’.
Lebanon has long been divided by a history of sectarianism and violence, and tensions have become exacerbated during the recent conflict with Israel. Just days after the billboards were destroyed, however, the Beirut municipality issued a new initiative to promote a narrative of national unity. On the orders of Lebanon’s Interior Minister Ahmad al-Hajjar, it was announced that all sectarian posters, banners, photos, flags, and advertisements placed on public property along Beirut’s central district were to be removed in order to make Beirut ‘a city free of sectarian and party slogans’.3
As the response to the ‘New Era’ campaign shows, however, Lebanese approaches to memorialisation of the recent past and to the ongoing conflict with Israel are diverse and divisive. By introducing a national narrative of unity, without first seeking to repair existing divisions or address the challenges currently facing Beirut’s population, the government risks exacerbating tensions rather than overcoming them.
Political images have long been a common feature of Beirut’s urban landscape. Most writings on political Lebanon and memorialisation do not fail to acknowledge the ‘walls continually adorned with banners, posters, portraits immortalising iconic images and infamous slogans, an informal cornucopia of the “living dead”’.4 These visual displays are a means by which Beirut’s residents can express loyalty, demonstrate their political identity, and commemorate the dead. However, they also play a role in what Meier has described (in the context of south Lebanon) as ‘borderscaping’: a marking of territory or boundaries through the use of political iconography.5
In speaking with a number of residents of Beirut in May 2025, the majority agreed with the decision to remove party political insignia from the capital. This did not seem to be out of a desire to limit expressions of identity. As 34-year-old Farid explained, ‘I totally understand that people want to showcase the loved ones they lost. It’s understandable. I feel like it shouldn’t be on the highways on the main roads. It can be in a more you know like local scale, in a more private manner’.
Instead, approval of the directive was linked to the way in which political imagery in Beirut often represents an expression of power, and a suppression of freedom, in the areas in which it is displayed. Hadi, a 29-year-old Sunni resident of the Hamra district of Beirut, claimed that posters constitute an unofficial demarcation of ‘go’ and ‘no-go’ areas for different sectarian backgrounds: ‘I think it’s a surface issue, but at the same time, I would, personally, when I go into an area and I see that it’s predominantly this group or that group, or if it’s a contested area and one group is trying to impose itself, I do feel a bit tense’.
Kataeb party flag. Credit: Brontë Philips.
Similarly, Hassan, a 23-year-old from a Shi’a family background, remarked that, ‘in my opinion, one of the biggest ways of strong-arming the people in a local area to be afraid of portraying their political opinion is by putting up political posters that claim to represent the entire area’.
The area of the airport road, in this context, is symbolic – not only as a public space, but as one of the first vistas for those entering Lebanon. For some Beirut residents, the removal of party political posters in this iconic gateway to the country constitutes an important representation of Lebanon. As 28-year-old Farah reflected, ‘I don’t think you would feel safe if you see a terrorist picture on a billboard right when you are entering the country. So I think it’s important that they are being removed’.
In the context of Lebanon’s conflict memory, however, the removal of party political posters, and the promotion of ‘A New Era for Lebanon’, can also be interpreted as a continuation of what Khalaf has described as the ‘collective amnesia’ of post-civil war Lebanon.6 The Ta’if Agreement, signed in 1989 to mark the end of the conflict, effectively imposed a policy of state-sponsored silence on the violence of the civil war.7 It implemented a power-sharing arrangement which reinforced the political sectarianism of the civil war and empowered the same elites who were responsible for violence to control the narratives of that violence. The subsequent amnesty law, which pardoned many of the same sectarian leaders, meant that the conflict had no public resolution.
Yet, rather than contain and suppress the collective trauma of the civil war, the state-imposed silence created a memory vacuum which, in turn, facilitated a proliferation of memory cultures. Today, these competing narratives continue to maintain and perpetuate tensions among the population. For some, both the new advertising campaign – which has been rolled out across Beirut – and the directive, were believed to be another attempt to erase the realities of conflict and division in Lebanon. As 30-year-old Mona observed, ‘you can’t remove the political parties from Lebanon. You can’t remove the support, the years of integration, and the years of brainwashing. You cannot remove that by taking down a few posters’.
Similarly, with the ‘New Era’ campaign functioning as a (literal) plastering over of the wounds of conflict with Israel, it seems to some as though they are being encouraged to forget their experiences of the recent, and ongoing, hostilities. This deprives people not only of a chance to address their trauma, but to take steps to begin to heal. Mona viewed the promotion of a new collective narrative of unity as an official silencing of trauma which ‘denies us time to grieve over what just happened’.
As well as ignoring existing issues, there is a concern that the new initiatives could reignite schisms. 28-year-old Ali, a Shi’a resident of Beirut, expressed fears that the efforts to remove political insignia could backfire: ‘I think in general, regulations would not solve the issues, but it would create suppression that would lead to more extremist [views] – especially when one sect feels that it’s a victim during and after the war’. In this case, attempts to promote a facade of unity may in fact deepen feelings of exclusion, as they deny the population the chance to hold an honest dialogue about the scars of recent conflict memory.
Martyrs’ Square, looking towards Al-Amin mosque. Credit: Brontë Philips.
Even among those who agreed with the municipality’s efforts to remove party political iconography, many were sceptical about whether the initiative would be effective. The directive does not constitute a removal of images across the whole of Beirut. Posters celebrating the Kataeb party remain in several areas, while images of Bashir Gemayel, as well as Lebanese Forces flags and icons, are still displayed in areas such as Achrafieh. In some cases, while party flags are taken down, images of leaders, such as Nasrallah and Nabih Berri, remain. As Hadi recalled, ‘10 years ago they did the same thing. There was a thawing of ties between the Future Movement and Hezbollah, and they didn’t fix any of their primary disagreements, but they agreed to remove their posters … this lasted maybe a month or two before all the posters started to reappear magically’.
Hadi also expressed doubt as to whether the removal of sectarian signs would contribute to any rehabilitation of social divides, particularly where these had been exaggerated in the wake of the recent conflict with Israel: ‘I’m pretty sure they have other avenues of brainwashing those people … Not just Hezbollah, the Christians, the Sunnis. They have other avenues: schools, clubs, scouts. That’s why I think it’s just like a surface issue, and I’m sure they’re going to be back as soon as the going gets tough, those posters’.
The ‘New Era’ campaign, while celebrated by some as a reclamation of national sovereignty, has also increased feelings of disillusionment towards the new administration. With the government seemingly choosing to tackle the country’s divisions on a superficial level only, many of Beirut’s residents feel let down. As one social media user wrote on X, ‘No one has time for martyrs, reconstruction, the South or the occupation … [Some] are busy decorating the airport road so tourists can enjoy their stay in Lebanon’. Likewise, Hadi claimed that ‘I just think it’s a very cheap gimmick to attract tourists, and this is just another thing that I’m bothered with, that the government cares more about tourists than its own people’.
![A photo taken through a car window shows a poster which displays an aerial image of the Bay of Jounieh, with text and an image of the Lebanese flag superimposed on it. The text reads: عهد جديد للبنان [translates to: A New Era for Lebanon]](https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/A-new-era-for-Lebanon-airport-road-2-1-1.jpg)
‘A New Era for Lebanon’ poster on the airport road. Credit: Brontë Philips.
The new initiatives may signal hope for a change in Lebanon’s circumstances, but many of those interviewed feel these displays of optimism are premature and fail to address the reality of the situation. Despite the ceasefire agreed in November last year, Israel still occupies five positions in Lebanon and continues to launch airstrikes at what it claims are Hezbollah targets.8 Lebanon is also desperately seeking funding to support its recovery and reconstruction, which is projected to cost around $11billion USD.9 It is not clear how, or when, Lebanon can build a more stable and unified future. As Hassan highlighted, ‘there is a lot of steps you need to do before tearing down the political posters and replacing them with ultra optimistic “yeh we’re coming back blah blah” posters … you’re not going to wave a magic wand and make Lebanon great again. The people are hurt, they’re tired, they’re injured’.
For Mona, the initiatives are simply another attempt to incorporate the current conflict with Israel into a cycle of violence, forgotten and re-remembered: ‘I think that, as Lebanese people, we’re always trying to start over, and we’re always trying to push everything under the rug. We’ve seen it with the civil war. We’ve seen it with the 2006 [Israel-Lebanon] war. We’ve seen it with this war … how very Lebanese of us, to turn the page’. If the Lebanese state wants the visual displays of unity to truly reflect the reality on the ground, it cannot simply paper over its divisive history. Instead, it must work to promote an honest and inclusive dialogue amongst its population, and allow the Lebanese people to openly share their memories and experiences of conflict to allow them to move forward.
*Pseudonyms have been used throughout to protect the identity of those interviewed.
This article was originally published by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London.
June 12, 2025
Modern conflicts are no longer neatly contained within national borders but are increasingly shaped by complex, transnational geoeconomic systems. This event marks the culmination of a five-year Chatham House research programme under the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy, and Trends (XCEPT) initiative funded by UK international Development. The research explores the evolving dynamics of transnational conflict ecosystems across the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel, and parts of West and East Africa. The programme investigates how conflict economies — sustained by both licit and illicit supply chains — are reshaping regional power structures and challenging the effectiveness of traditional Western policy responses. As regional middle powers pursue pragmatic, issue-based alignments and military actors evolve into significant political players, the urgency for a more adaptive and strategic Western approach grows.
Speakers:
In recent years, high-resolution satellite imagery and geospatial analysis have become increasingly valuable tools in documenting the effects of conflict, including the widespread destruction of infrastructure, property, and lives in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan. In January, satellite imagery played a pivotal role in the U.S. Department of State’s determination that members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias had committed genocide in their attacks against non-Arab communities in several locations in Sudan. Most recently it has been used to document the damage caused by missile and drone strikes in the ongoing India and Pakistan conflict.
Conducting research on sensitive or contentious issues in fragile and conflict-affected areas where demographic data is flawed, access to remote and insecure areas is challenging, and representative samples prove particularly elusive is a perennial problem. In these terrains, fieldwork is typically limited and skewed by security concerns and the associated costs, and it is often the voices of elites that are the loudest and most prominent. The Farsi phrase “Can hearing ever be like seeing?” reflects the greater weight that should be given to the things we can see for ourselves, compared to what we are told.
To this end, satellite imagery and informed analysis can be usefully deployed to study complex and sensitive issues in fragile and conflict-affected areas and support more effective policy development. While imagery is not a substitute for talking to the people directly impacted by conflict, our research on the outbreak of heavy fighting between Iran and Afghanistan in May 2023 shows that it is a critical tool in developing a better understanding of these complex terrains, where the loudest voices can dominate the media and social landscapes and skew research findings—and, all too often, policy outcomes.
Background to the Conflict
In May 2023, heavy fighting broke out between Iranian and Taliban forces on the border between Afghanistan and Iran. At the time, the media and many analysts looked to explain the incident as a result of the escalating “war of words” in the week before between senior officials in the Taliban and the Iranian Republic.
As is common during dry years, the Iranian authorities complained that Kabul had retained more than its fair share of water from the Helmand River, depriving farmers and communities across the border in the province of Sistan and Baluchistan in Iran. Under a treaty signed by the two nations in 1973, the water is a shared resource. The Iranian president at the time, Ebrahim Raisi, warned “the rulers of Afghanistan to give the water rights to the people of Sistan and Baluchestan,” prompting responses from senior Taliban officials.
Rather than focusing on the rhetoric surrounding the dispute, our research revealed novel insights into the conflict by focusing on concrete facts that could be observed through satellite imagery. Our research pointed to a more localized dispute about border management and the challenges of recalibrating cross-border relations following the collapse of the Afghan Republic and the subsequent Taliban takeover, and revealed far more pervasive issues with the widespread and unsustainable exploitation of groundwater across the Helmand River basin.
Disparities Between Observation and Discourse
The use of geospatial analysis in our research helped us better understand the accuracy of the competing narratives that authorities in Tehran and Kabul look to convey when complaining about transboundary water rights in the Helmand River Basin.
Typically, disputes between the two countries begin with the Iranian government accusing authorities in Kabul of withholding water from the Helmand River and failing to comply with their treaty obligations. Kabul authorities generally suggest the reduction in water flow is a function of drought, noting that there is a provision in the Helmand Treaty to reduce water flows under such conditions.
Tehran alleges that Afghanistan’s ability to store and divert water—through infrastructure projects such as the Kajaki Dam, constructed in the 1950s, and more recently the Kamal Khan Dam, built in 2021—has prevented sufficient water from being discharged into Iran for use by the population of Sistan and Baluchestan.
There is some truth to this complaint, especially since the completion of the Kamal Khan Dam. As satellite imagery has shown, this latest dam, constructed in the lower part of the Helmand River Basin—just upstream from the Helmand fork—now allows Kabul to release water from the Kajaki Dam in the upper basin to be used by communities downstream in Afghanistan while retaining any remaining discharge at Kamal Khan, and preventing it from flowing to Iran (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Chah Nimeh before (2018) and after (2022) the commissioning of Kamal Khan Dam. Copyright Alcis. Republished with permission (on file with Lawfare).
Further imagery analysis has shown that any efforts by the Afghan authorities to retain and divert water have been mirrored on the Iranian side of the border—often, some years earlier. For instance, the Jeriki Canal and Chah Nimeh reservoirs in Iran, located after the Helmand fork—where the Helmand River first meets the Iranian border—were initiated in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively, to divert and store water, mainly for the urban populations of Zabol and Zahedan. Before the construction of the Kamal Khan Dam in Afghanistan, these reservoirs captured the water once released from the Kajaki Dam. The construction of the Chah Nimeh 4 reservoir in Iran in 2008—which more than doubled storage capacity—subsequently significantly reduced the water flow into the Nad-e-Ali River and Hamoun-e-Puzhak in Afghanistan, and the Hamoun-e-Saberi in Iran (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Impact of construction of Chah Nimeh 4 on the hamouns. Copyright Alcis. Republished with permission (on file with Lawfare).
Consequently, while historically Tehran has argued that it is Kabul’s failure to release water from Kajaki that limited water flow to the hamouns—a series of terminal lakes and salt marshes—and Sistan and Baluchestan province, its own infrastructure efforts at the Helmand fork have been more detrimental to the rural livelihoods of the downstream populations in both Afghanistan and Iran. Indeed, Iranian authorities tend to prioritize the populations of Zabol and Zahedan; water is released from the Chah Nimeh reservoirs to farmers in Sistan and Baluchestan for irrigation only after the needs of the urban population have been met.
Through imagery analysis, it is also clear that Tehran sought to stem the flow of water from the Hamoun-e-Hirmand through a series of dams on the Sar-e-Shelah River in the district of Hamoun in Sistan and Baluchestan province (Figure 3). As such, while Tehran accuses Kabul of seeking to retain and divert water to its advantage and to the detriment of downstream populations in Iran, Tehran has been doing the same for longer and—until the completion of the Kamal Khan Dam—perhaps more effectively. While Tehran’s complaints have intensified since the completion of the Kamal Khan Dam, it is inaccurate for Tehran to portray itself as the sole victim and Kabul as the sole perpetrator.
Figure 3. Dams on Sar-e-Shelah River constructed circa 2001, redirecting water from flowing toward Gowd-e-Zirah. Copyright Alcis. Republished with permission (on file with Lawfare).
Imagery analysis also revealed that the fighting between Afghan and Iranian forces began in an area where the border populations do not even share common water sources but rather where there is a long tradition of cross-border smuggling (Figure 4). It shows just how close the Iranian border wall is to Afghan farmland and villages, often as little as 60 meters apart. The construction of this border wall increased the potential for the Iranian Border Guards (IBG) to fire across the border and, following the Taliban’s capture of Kabul, increased the likelihood that their battle-hardened soldiers would return fire.
Figure 4. Water flows on the border from Kamal Khan to Kang. Copyright Alcis. Republished with permission (on file with Lawfare).
Further satellite imagery exposed the increased number of catapults used to propel drugs into Iran along this stretch of the border following the Taliban takeover, an indicator of their tolerance of the cross-border trade—a source of increasing frustration among the IBG and, ultimately, the direct cause of the fighting (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Proximity of farmland to Afghan border posts and Iranian border gates near Makiki village. Copyright Alcis. Republished with permission (on file with Lawfare).
Implications of Reduced Surface Water
Perhaps most important, satellite imagery and geospatial analysis were instrumental in identifying how communities in Afghanistan and the Iranian state have responded to a reduction in surface water in the Helmand River Basin through widespread groundwater exploitation and the threat this now poses to the lives and livelihoods of communities across southwest Afghanistan and in Sistan and Baluchestan in Iran.
In Afghanistan, access to affordable solar-powered systems has been transformative and has led to ever greater numbers of Afghan farmers installing deep wells and extracting groundwater. Only a meter in diameter, many wells are more than 100 meters in depth and have water drawn from them using a pump powered by multiple arrays of solar panels. While underground, these wells often leave a visual signature—a surface reservoir and solar panels—that can be identified and then mapped using imagery (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Household reservoirs used by those using solar-powered deep wells to extract groundwater (2016, 2019, and 2023). Copyright Alcis. Republished with permission (on file with Lawfare).
Imagery shows that by 2023, there were at least 68,160 deep wells in the Helmand River Basin—five times more than in 2016. While these were at one time used only by farmers looking to settle remote former desert lands in the southwest provinces of Helmand and Farah—often to grow poppies—these deep wells have become ubiquitous, commonly used in surface-irrigated areas where water flows have become increasingly unreliable due to climate change.
In areas formerly irrigated using traditional irrigation systems—karez—increased temperatures and less precipitation in the Helmand River Basin resulted in reduced water flows and a move to deep wells. As the number of deep wells increased, the karez dried up completely. With many more deep wells installed, groundwater levels are falling at an alarming rate—in some cases, by as much as five meters per year. Some of the earlier, shallower wells dug in the initial years of settling the former desert lands of the southwest have failed, resulting in deeper wells being installed in ever-increasing numbers (Figure 7).
Figure 7. The expansion of groundwater wells in Uruzgan (2019 and 2024). Copyright Alcis. Republished with permission (on file with Lawfare).
In southwest Afghanistan, farmers are increasingly reliant on their deep wells for irrigation and drinking water, leading to increasingly neglected surface irrigation systems (which are collectively managed). This shift toward water as a privately owned asset will likely render the water management problem even more intractable.
Farmers are aware of the threat this increase in groundwater extraction poses to their ability to continue to draw water, grow crops, and sustain their livelihoods into the future, but they see no other option. In fact, imagery analysis of household compound data shows that over the past decade, population growth in the Helmand River Basin in Afghanistan has coincided with increased groundwater exploitation (Figure 8). Outmigration appears to be restricted to areas that are not only receiving reduced surface water flows due to climate change, but where the groundwater is often salinated and cannot be used for agriculture. This includes districts like Dishu and Charburjak, in the lower part of the Helmand River.
Figure 8. Changing population in Helmand River Basin (2014 to 2023). Copyright Alcis. Republished with permission (on file with Lawfare).
Across the border in Iran, satellite imagery shows the same move to groundwater extraction—however, led by the state and at scale. In Sistan and Baluchestan, we used imagery to identify the location and size of three deep well drilling and water extraction projects (Figure 9). Established in 2019, these wells have been drilled to between 1,000 and 3,000 meters. The reservoir accompanying the well in the district of Nimroz is 27,000 square meters. These three deep wells, as well as the dramatic upswing in groundwater well drilling in the Helmand River Basin in Afghanistan, reflect how state, individual, and community responses to the climate crisis and diminishing surface water sources risk depleting the groundwater that has increasingly become a lifeline for both rural and urban populations in the region; it is literally a race to the bottom.
Figure 9. Location and extent of Iranian deep well drilling operations and water storage (2024). Copyright Alcis. Republished with permission (on file with Lawfare).
The Importance of Using All Faculties
By drawing heavily on geospatial analysis and imagery, our research has gone a long way in recasting and refocusing discussions on transboundary water rights and conflict on the Afghanistan-Iran border. In particular, it has shown the role that Tehran has played in retaining and diverting water from populations downstream, including farming communities in Sistan and Baluchistan—diverging from the narrative that apportions blame solely to Kabul.
Our research has also identified, quantified, and visualized the widespread move to groundwater extraction in the Helmand River Basin in Afghanistan. This trend could, if continued unchecked, threaten the livelihoods of up to 3.65 million people over the next decade. This should spark concern for countries in the region and in Europe, which have often been the final destination for Afghan migrants fleeing war and destitution back home.
By focusing on concrete, observable fact—rather than just discourse—this study has shown that researchers conducting projects in fragile and conflict-affected areas should draw on as many senses as they can to avoid misleading policymakers, while seeking to achieve the best policy outcomes.
This article was originally published on Lawfare.
Since January 2025, an international research consortium led by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), has been undertaking a research project to improve academic and policymaker knowledge on preventing and managing climate change-related conflict and instability.
The research will improve our understanding of how the Regional Strategy for Stabilisation, Recovery and Resilience (RS-SRR, a joint project of Lake Chad Basin countries, the African Union, and the Lake Chad Basin Commission) and related efforts influence the relationship between climate change and environmental degradation on the one hand, and stability, recovery, and resilience on the other. Based on the knowledge gained from the Lake Chad Basin-specific research, and informed by comparative studies of other similar initiatives, the research will develop a set of generic principles and factors that influence the effectiveness of efforts to prevent and manage climate-related conflict and instability. The intent is that these principles and factors can inform the design and adaptation of climate change-related peace and security initiatives in other contexts.
The two-year project is led by Research Professor Cedric de Coning, and includes Dr. Andrew E. Yaw Tchie, Dr. Minoo Koefoed, and Dr. Thor Olav Iversen of NUPI. The other members of the consortium include Professor Freedom Onuoha from the University of Nigeria-Nsukka, Professor Saibou Issa from the University of Maroua in Cameroon, Dr. Thomas Gonzales and Dr. Dirk Bruin from the Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) ) at the Free University of Brussels, and Louise Lieberknecht and Natalia Skripnikova from GRID-Arendal.
Climate change, conflict, and resilience
All over the world, the effects of climate change are exarcerbating existing vulnerabilities and increasing the risk of inter-communal tensions over land, water, and food. The UN’s New Agenda for Peace (2023) predicts that failure to tackle challenges posed by climate change will have devastating effects for peacebuilding objectives. The knowledge gained from this project is intended to help others facing similar challenges by providing insights into how locally led initiatives can bolster resilience and prevent and manage conflict.
The Lake Chad region and the wider West African Sahel belt are experiencing the compounding effects of violent conflict and climate-related extreme weather events that have caused large-scale population displacement and that have further increased water- and food insecurity. In response, several countries bordering the Lake Chad Basin (Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, and Benin), in collaboration with the Lake Chad Basin Commission and the African Union, developed the RS-SRR. This strategy, together with its enablers and related processes, provides this project with an interesting case study of how one specific region is attempting to manage climate and environmental-related conflict and instability.
It is a multi-stakeholder effort, in which the governors of the territories bordering the Lake Chad Basin, together with traditional leaders and civil society, serve as key drivers and implementers of the strategy. Other stakeholders at the national, regional, continental, and international level provide political, technical and financial support at multiple scales. The strategy is aimed at generating holistic and whole-of-society changes that address both the symptoms and underlying drivers of instability across the Humanitarian, Development, and Peace (HDP) Nexus. The strategy and related efforts represent an attempt to go beyond stabilisation by including recovery and resilience in the overall framing of the problem and its solutions, and this highlights the importance of addressing shared challenges in a way that fosters collaboration among a diverse range of sectors and stakeholders.
The Lake Chad RS-SRR is a response to three separately identifiable, but deeply interrelated, cross-cutting and mutually reinforcing crises: (1) a structural and persistent development deficit, (2) a breakdown of the social contract that had manifested in lawlessness and a violent extremist insurgency, and (3) a climate change-related environmental disaster. In the context of the deep complexity that characterises efforts to holistically manage such a multifaceted crisis, the research project has developed a conceptual framework for analysing interventions that aims to influence climate-related peace and security risks. The framework consist of five interrelated dimensions, namely (1) integration and the Humanitarian Development and Peace (HDP) Nexus, (2) localisation and context specificity, (3) multi-stakeholder participation, (4) adaptation, and (5) knowledge production and learning.
The project will use this conceptual framework to analyse how the Lake Chad stabilisation strategy and related efforts are structured and coordinated, as well as its influence to date. The project aims to identify and analyse key social-ecological factors that influence adaptation choices at local to national levels, with special attention to analysing the role of social cohesion, adaptive capacity, and societal resilience. This will inform how stabilisation, recovery, and resilience efforts can support conflict-sensitive and peace-positive adaptation, and can be used to help guide similar response initiatives elsewhere in the world.
Since April 2023, the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has triggered the world’s largest and fastest-growing displacement crisis: over 12.8 million people have fled to neighbouring countries. Despite the significant scale of the conflict and the resulting death toll, the conflict is regarded as a “forgotten war”, and the humanitarian response has been insufficiently funded.
Focusing on the situation of women Sudanese refugees in Eastern Chad, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and its Chadian partner BUCOFORE carried out field research in the refugee camps of Farchana, Breidjing, Djabal, and Irdimi in April and May 2024. The research employed a mixed-methods approach based on a perception survey and qualitative interviews to centre women’s experiences. Three demographic groups were identified: newly arrived Sudanese refugees and Chadian returnees displaced by the ongoing conflict between the RSF and the SAF, long-term Sudanese refugees displaced since the Darfur crisis in 2003-2004, and local communities in Chad.
Humanitarian aid falls short
As more refugees arrive in Chad, humanitarian aid remains insufficient to meet the growing needs. Chad hosts over 844,000 Sudanese refugees and Chadian returnees. That’s on top of the 400,000 Sudanese refugees who have fled since the Darfur conflict in 2003-2004. While the 2004 humanitarian response plan in Chad was funded at 87.9 percent, only 45.4 percent of the 2023 plan received funding. Despite an overall increase in funding on average since 2016, available resources cannot keep up with the rapid escalation of needs, resulting in gaps in assistance and a failure to protect refugees.
In November 2023 and March 2024, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that unless more funding is received, it would be unable to continue providing life-saving assistance in Chad.
“When we arrived here in Chad (2004), the humanitarian organizations helped us a lot. They really lived up to expectations. Nothing was missing. But in recent years, they have stopped helping us. We manage to provide for ourselves and our children. There are a lot of us here now. The water points are no longer sufficient. There is no more wood around, so we have to go a long way to get some. Medicines are no longer available at the health centre, and we no longer receive assistance. People are selected to receive it. It’s not like before.”
Sudanese refugee in Djabal Refugee Camp, Chad
Our research shows that while 74 percent of respondents received emergency assistance when they arrived in Chad, this proportion is higher among long-term refugees than among those recently arrived.
Women’s perceptions of and satisfaction with humanitarian assistance
On arrival, most women refugees receive food, water, medical assistance, and shelter. However, distributions are impacted by the funding gap. The WFP declared that “activities received only 50 percent of the required funding, which represented a decrease compared to the 61 percent level of funding in 2022”. These observations are supported by the refugees who report limited amounts of basic needs such as food and water. “I was given buckets and a mat, but the help isn’t enough. No one even asks us what we want. We need food and water—the two most important things—but it’s so hard to get them”, reported one refugee in Irdimi Refugee Camp in Chad.
The need for a gender-responsive humanitarian response in the camps
While all refugees share economic needs, women and girls have gender-specific needs, including maternal and reproductive health services, protection from gender-based violence, and economic empowerment. 65 percent of Sudanese refugees and Chadian returnees did not feel that the assistance responded to their specific needs as women. 33 percent of respondents attributed the deficiencies in aid to the assumption that everyone in the camp has the same needs.
This underlines the complex challenges facing humanitarian responses: urgent needs such as food and water have to be balanced with longer-term needs such as education and economic opportunities. One young newly displaced Sudanese refugee in the Farchana refugee camp in Chad perceived access to education to be her primary need as a young woman. The responses show that needs are not only influenced by gender, but also shaped by intersecting factors such as age, socio-economic status and opportunities. Another recently displaced Sudanese refugees in Farchana said: “As a mother, I am debilitated by the situation that my children are going through. To see them starving, without medicine and without education, disgusts me.”
Since the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) adopted its first Policy on Refugee Women (1990), there has been significant progress in recognizing the specific needs of refugee women and girls and the necessity for gender responsive humanitarian action, such as the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) and the establishment of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. Gender mainstreaming has become a feature of humanitarian aid in most contexts. Yet, gender responsiveness remains limited in practice, particularly in situations of displacement. In addition, gender policies remain generic and fail to account for contextual specificities. Ensuring that refugee women and girls are protected from all forms of gender-based violence, trafficking, and exploitation, and are given access to education and economic opportunities, remains an enduring challenge.
The international responsibility in supporting populations amid conflicts
In a highly uncertain and increasingly conflict-afflicted world, where millions are forced to flee their homes, supporting populations in need is critical. The ability of humanitarian actors to respond to needs primarily derives from the mobilisation of funds. But shifting donor priorities and concurrent humanitarian crises have turned the armed conflict in Sudan into a neglected crisis. UN agencies and NGOs have denounced these funding discrepancies, which exacerbate the plight of displaced people. The US aid cuts will worsen the situation not only in Sudan and Chad but globally, multiplying crisis hotspots and humanitarian emergencies. It is imperative that the humanitarian response matches the scale of the Sudan crisis. The international community must act decisively to support millions of displaced people and refugees at risk of starvation in Sudan and in neighbouring countries.
The war in Sudan must no longer be treated as a forgotten crisis. Sudan stands at a strategic crossroads, not only for Africa, but also in terms of broader regional and global stability. As the conflict continues to displace and plunge millions into suffering, Sudan demands urgent attention from global powers, humanitarian organizations, and regional actors alike. Diplomatic efforts must be intensified to bring all stakeholders to the negotiation table, especially as the risks of partition grow, involving the two rival factions (SAF and RSF), regional powers, and international actors. Diplomatic efforts, and the involvement of major regional actors as well as the UN, are crucial to finding a peaceful resolution to this protracted conflict.
Could you please introduce yourself and your role in the XCEPT programme?
I’m Dr Costanza Torre, and I’m the lead researcher on the South Sudan branch of the XCEPT programme at King’s College London. Our team at King’s is focused on understanding why, in fragile and conflict-affected states (FCAS), some people seek peace and reconciliation, while others pursue violence. In the case of South Sudan, we’ll be analysing this by carrying out a survey and qualitative interviews to understand what role mental health and exposure to conflict, among other factors, play in informing people’s choices of peaceful or violent behaviours. We are hoping that these findings may inform policy decisions around reconciliation. As the South Sudan lead, I’ve been helping to shape the research design, recruiting local researchers, and guiding the implementation of the research.
Tell us about your background. What were you doing before you joined XCEPT?
I describe myself as a medical anthropologist and critical mental health researcher, which is basically a way to make sense of my very interdisciplinary background. I started off by doing a BA and an MA in clinical psychology, but over the course of my studies I realised that I wanted to consider matters in a much more anthropological way. This led me to join a research project in northern Uganda exploring the reintegration of former child soldiers that had been abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army – with a focus on the psychological consequences of stigmatisation during the reintegration process. After this, I continued working in northern Uganda for my PhD, which I completed in the London School of Economics. Over fifteen months, I lived in Palabek refugee settlement, which was almost entirely inhabited by South Sudanese refugees, and I carried out an ethnography of the mental health and humanitarian interventions that were being implemented in the settlement.
The entrance of Palabek refugee settlement. Credit: Costanza Torre
Northern Uganda was a really important area to research this, because Uganda currently hosts 1.8 million refugees, which is the largest refugee population in Africa, and the sixth highest refugee population in the world. The field of humanitarian psychiatry is undergoing immense expansion, and during my fieldwork a lot of NGOs were implementing mental health interventions around the settlement where I stayed, so it was really interesting to look at what kinds of programmes were being implemented and the reasoning behind them. This showed how international organisations were understanding the experience of refugees and what issues they thought needed addressing. There’s a huge focus on the role of culture in shaping suffering, and rightly so, but I found that very often the socioeconomic context in which someone is living was ignored.
Often, ‘cultural’ factors are evoked to explain why people don’t really engage with emergency mental health interventions. Humanitarian workers and academics often think that, as these interventions rely on biomedical models, they don’t match the way in which people understand their own suffering, which may involve cosmological and spiritual elements, for example. And while sometimes this may be true, in contexts of chronic poverty and food insecurity, people are also unlikely to engage with mental health interventions because they don’t understand them as helping. They see them as tackling problems only in the mind, whereas what they really need is change in their actual circumstances.
My fieldwork had a strong focus on the social determinants of mental health, and I tried to understand the psychological suffering of refugees away from their clinical dimensions, and rather as being linked to the present context, which is the way in which people usually understand and explain their suffering. For example, someone might say that yes, they experienced trauma due to displacement or exposure to conflict, but the cause of their present suffering is actually a result of food insecurity. Throughout my work, I’ve tried to expand on the notion of ‘psychocentrism’, and challenge the idea that, because manifestations of distress are psychological, then the causes of the distress are psychological, and the solution needs to be psychological as well.
The slogan for the celebration of World Mental Health Day in Palabek refugee settlement, October 2019. Credit: Costanza Torre
Do you think there’s scope to run interventions that combine mental health and socioeconomic support, or should the priority be on addressing people’s living situations?
That’s a very good question. As a clinical psychologist, I definitely see the value in mental health interventions, especially if we’re talking about situations in which symptoms may be particularly acute, or if somebody is suicidal or potentially violent. The problem is that we keep separating these two realms, whereas they’re not divided at all. It doesn’t make sense to think of, for example, food insecurity as one thing and mental health as another, because the experience of not having enough food is already a deep psychological experience of suffering and uncertainty.
This tendency to separate the socioeconomic reality from the psychological one doesn’t stand up against anthropological research which tells us that socioeconomic factors are deeply embedded within people’s ‘lifeworlds’. People’s lives are fundamentally shaped by their network of social relations – and social relations are embedded in, and hugely linked to, socioeconomic factors, such as how much food you may have at your disposal or what your housing situation is.
One other point about mental health interventions that’s important to note is that, often, they’re predicated on a strongly individualised model. They look at symptoms, and they look at the individual. This fits in very well in the world of humanitarian interventions which are often focused on ideas of self-reliance and individual resilience, but what we know – and what anthropologists have been saying over and over again – is that this often does not mirror what people care about and the way in which people actually live. People exist in networks, they exist in relationships, and an emphasis on self-reliance doesn’t make sense to societies that are deeply structured by caring responsibilities.
Refugees walk to the Health Centre III in Palabek refugee settlement. Credit: Costanza Torre
Where does South Sudan fit into this model? Is its society structured or understood in a more relational or individual way?
In South Sudan, personhood tends to be extremely relational. Individuality of course exists, but it’s not valued as much as relationships, and people’s worlds often revolve around extended families. This has huge implications for people’s lives, as it puts enormous pressure on the performance of social roles. For example, what we’ve seen in some of the initial findings from our research in South Sudan is how much the value of cattle is linked to men’s ability to be able to perform as a man and to provide for their family. This expectation exists across society, because it’s very often an understanding that is enforced relationally and specifically by women’s practices. For example, in some regions of South Sudan, it’s common for women to write and sing songs praising men that have been particularly good at behaving like ‘men’, while emasculating and mocking men who haven’t lived up to these expectations.
There’s a concept called ‘lived pragmatism’ that I find very helpful in understanding South Sudanese society. It comes from the social and moral anthropology of Africa, and it’s used to explain how, among certain societies, what is real about people is what can be observed from the outside. When it comes to ideas of masculinity, this means that, until you’re seen by others to perform as a man, you often cannot be defined as one. Because personhood is so relational in South Sudan, the idea of not being valued by society is particularly existentially threatening and can have a huge impact on a person’s wellbeing. This was something I saw first-hand during my fieldwork in Uganda, where the inability to work and to provide had enormous consequences on the mental health of South Sudanese refugees. During the dry season, when food shortages were felt in a particularly acute way, depression rates would skyrocket in the settlements. My research suggests that this was related to the heightened stress of resource scarcity, but also to the fact that being unable to perform relational gender roles, such as providing for one’s family, made it even more difficult for people to see a future for themselves.
A refugee shows the small onion harvest he got due to little rain and climate change in Palabek refugee settlement. Credit: Costanza Torre
And this raises another significant issue with mental health humanitarian interventions. Interventions narrowly based on notions of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder often put the
emphasis on addressing the past traumatic event, and assume that forms of suffering are generally rooted in past traumas. Yet, for many people, causes of suffering are rooted in present circumstances and in their worries about the future, so there’s this temporal disjuncture between intervention priorities and people’s actual experiences. This is a theme that has come up time and time again in my research. It seems to me to point to the fact that, in academic research, knowledge needs to be generated from below and co-produced with – rather than extracted from – local researchers and research participants, to make sure that humanitarian programmes address the real needs of their recipients.
Why did you choose to work on XCEPT?
XCEPT to me was incredibly exciting because it offered an opportunity to work on South Sudan and to expand the knowledge that I already had from working with South Sudanese refugees. It’s also been amazing to be part of such an interdisciplinary team, and to rely again on some of my expertise and skills as a psychologist.
One thing I’ve found really valuable is being able to work so closely with local researchers in South Sudan, to get an idea of the context they are embedded in and to learn more about how they understand their country’s situation. I feel incredibly grateful that we’ve been able to find the people that we did, and they all bring such diverse expertise, commitment, and nuance to the job. The highlight of my work on XCEPT so far has been to spend time in Juba collaborating with the South Sudanese researchers. When designing the research, we tried to construct questions that were really attuned to the context in South Sudan, but when we discussed them with the researchers, we were confronted with the amount of our own inaccurate assumptions that had shaped the questions in the first place.
For example, the researchers explained that questions around causes of violence in instances in which killing had taken place may only be relevant if they were about the accidental killing of a person perceived as innocent. If the killing was a form of revenge, then the ‘victim’ would be seen to be deserving of that kind of punishment, which has enormous implications for how we conceptualise justice and reconciliation in South Sudan. By working together with the local researchers, we were able to deconstruct our questions and rebuild them in a way that will make more sense to the people that will be answering them.
A sign in Palabek settlement encourages refugees to seek mental health support at the local health centre. Credit: Costanza Torre
What do you hope the XCEPT project will achieve?
There are such incredible people working on our team, both in the UK and in South Sudan, and so I hope that our research will be able to provide a nuanced understanding of lived experiences of conflict. When we talk about mental health using a symptom-based model, it can lend itself to the victimisation of people that have lived through violence. By conducting research in a way that closely
involves people on the ground, I think it reopens the space to talk about the human experience of conflict, which can often be a story of enormous resourcefulness and strength.
Ultimately, I’d like a really strong emphasis to be put on addressing the things that actually matter to people. I’d like XCEPT to be able to give recommendations, to the FCDO or any other international organisation with power to implement change, that priorities should be chosen from the bottom up, and interventions should be based around what matters to people in their lives.
In the coastal province of Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique, what began in October 2017 as a series of deadly attacks by an armed group has escalated into a full-scale civil war. Known locally as ‘al-Shabaab’ (although distinct from the Somalia-based terror group of the same name), the group has waged a violent insurgency, causing widespread displacement and food insecurity. The region is rich in natural resources, and conflict is deeply intertwined with enormous mineral and hydrocarbon discoveries in the region in the 2010s.
Despite widespread recognition of the dynamics that have driven conflict on the Mozambique-Tanzania border, research has mostly focused just on causes and effects, without addressing the lived realities of communities in the borderlands. Recent research conducted by Bodhi Global Analysis on the border of the two countries reveals how gender and geography shape people’s experiences, creating impacts that have often been overlooked, outlined in this blog.
The prevailing nature of gender norms in conflict
Research found that men’s and women’s involvement in the conflict broadly aligns with existing gender norms and remain either unchanged or even reinforced. Most fighters and leaders of al-Shabaab are men, who also make most of the tactical decisions and carry out most attacks. Women, by contrast, have often been forcibly recruited into al-Shabaab through abduction or forcibly married to al-Shabaab fighters as a means for their families to secure protection and income.
Economic factors largely drive some of these roles. Recruitment into al-Shabaab allows men to fulfil gender-based expectations around providing for their families in a context where economic opportunities are scarce, and poverty levels are high. Where men have lost their livelihoods, they have found dominant ideas of masculinity challenged, pushing some into alcoholism, and, in turn, increasing rates of domestic violence. Despite this, women have expressed that, despite the economic burden they faced themselves, they were sympathetic to a belief that men were suffering from an inability to fulfil traditional roles as providers. The reality of this, of course, has been that men have effectively escaped accountability for physical violence.
Gendered experiences either side of the border
Cross-border trade has traditionally been dominated by men on both sides, who acted as the primary providers for their families through commercial activities like farming, fishing, and casual labour in agriculture and construction. This is enabled by a lack of restrictions on men’s mobility, allowing them to take advantage of cross-border transport methods like motorcycle taxis, boats, and buses. Where border closures have occurred, men in Mozambique have tended to seek informal labour in agriculture. In Tanzania, however, this has pushed many into joining al-Shabaab and migrate out of their community area.
The effect on women, however, is much greater. Women are often confined to more domestic household roles, or engage in some smaller scale income-generating activities to support families. Facing greater restrictions on mobility and access to resources, as well as increased risks of physical violence, many gender norms have changed for the worse in hard times. Insecurity and the loss of men to the conflict has led to an increase in female-headed households; these women bear a double burden of financially supporting their family while supporting their obligations at home. Where many women have relied on the incomes of husbands, they have been driven to desperate measures to provide for their families when these men have left or lost income opportunities. This has been seen in an increase in the prevalence of transactional sex on both sides of the border, as well as through the marriage of women to al-Shabaab fighters in Tanzania.
Between vulnerability and opportunity: women’s agency in the conflict
Despite the challenges women face, female heads of households have increasingly become involved in community leadership, which has traditionally been reserved for men. This conflict has thus created a space for women to assert agency by taking on these responsibilities. This, however, is rare, and prevailing gender norms continue to form a significant barrier to women’s empowerment. Some women cited joining armed groups as a means of gaining agency: women have sometimes joined al-Shabaab voluntarily, working as spies or in other supporting tasks such as transporting money and weapons across the border.
Rethinking gender in conflict zones
The findings from the borderlands research challenge conventional gendered narratives on conflict dynamics: men are not always perpetrators of violence, and women are not simply one-dimensional victims of armed conflict. The conflict has exposed a number of risks and opportunities for women in particular. For policymakers and humanitarian actors, this highlights the need to rethink approaches to gender in conflict, in a way that considers the range of roles that men and women might play. Crucially, it means more accurately addressing the drivers behind women’s support of and participation in armed conflict, supporting the creation of livelihood opportunities, community initiatives, and targeted support that addresses women’s social and economic needs. Only by moving beyond assumptions and recognising the full spectrum of gendered experiences can responses by impactful and sustainable.
