Summary

Peacebuilding and gender policy commonly assess women’s political agency through their representation in negotiations, leadership positions and formal organisations. Yet these measures can overlook how women already govern and regulate violence through socially and culturally recognised forms of authority. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Greater Pibor, South Sudan, this research examines the Kabarze, a decentralised movement of Murle mothers and grandmothers that emerged in response to violence between competing youth age-sets. Through song, dance, public shaming, social sanctions and the threat of maternal nudity, the women interrupted fighting, enforced accountability and compelled compliance. Their experience shows the importance of understanding authority through its effects, relationships and sources of legitimacy, while recognising that external support and formalisation can alter the foundations on which grassroots authority depends.

Key Findings

  • The Kabarze are a decentralised grassroots movement of Murle mothers and grandmothers that emerged organically in 2017 in response to escalating violence between competing youth age-sets in Greater Pibor.
  • The women exercised political authority through culturally recognised forms of action rooted in motherhood, kinship, collective responsibility and shared moral understandings.
  • Through song, dance, public shaming, social sanctions and the threat of maternal nudity, the Kabarze interrupted fighting, compelled young men to surrender weapons and enforced cattle compensation.
  • Women who held no formal political position were able to regulate violence and enforce accountability when elders, chiefs and government institutions struggled to influence increasingly militarised youth.
  • As the Kabarze became associated with government, NGOs and international organisations, young men perceived them differently, weakening some of the cultural authority through which their interventions had carried force.

Policy Implications

  • Gender programming can complement formal participation indicators with attention to women’s influence, legitimacy and capacity to act, including their ability to mobilise collective action, enforce accountability and generate compliance.
  • Peacebuilding programme design can begin by examining how conflict and militarisation have reshaped relations between generations, genders, customary authorities and the state, alongside identifying where authority formally resides.
  • Conflict and political economy analysis can map the relationships and culturally recognised sources of legitimacy through which authority becomes meaningful and capable of regulating violence. These may include age-set structures, spiritual authorities, women’s networks, kinship relations and locally recognised sanctions.
  • Before funding or formalising grassroots initiatives, practitioners can consider how leaders, committees, reporting requirements, institutional affiliations or external resources might alter the relationships that sustain local legitimacy. Effective engagement may sometimes begin with careful observation and restraint.
  • Conflict analysis and consultation processes can look beyond formal meetings and spoken deliberation to consider how authority is communicated through song, dance, voice, gesture, ritual, public shaming and other culturally meaningful forms of embodied action.