Following the Creators of Peace Circle, nine women continued for a further two weeks together to co-design a simple facilitated process that can be used with other women back in their communities. Minagano Kape, Ann Njeri Ndangui and Nyadow Makuach share their reflections on the process with Rob Lancaster, POF Team Leader.

The Peace Cirlce workshop, held from 29 July to 2 August, brought together women from diverse backgrounds in South Sudan to foster connections, share experiences, and explore their roles in peacebuilding. Women from regions with a history of conflict set aside their differences to build unity and sisterhood. The process explored inner peace, forgiveness, and self-awareness as crucial steps toward broader peacebuilding. Participants reflected on their personal growth, gaining the courage to speak up for themselves and their communities.

In the first of this human security series, we explored a different angle on just governance for South Sudan, highlighting the need for localised approaches, where governance should be rooted in community-driven measures and balanced with novel inputs, rather than imposing external legal frameworks. Now we turn to inclusive economics, including rethinking why seem to be in favour of ‘bull markets’ but not bull markets.

Over the coming weeks, we will explore five aspects of peacebuilding work in South Sudan, linked to themes of human security that were explored during the Caux Forum for Human Security, between 2008 and 2012. This vision of Mohamed Sahnoun still resonates with both the national and sub-national dynamics in South Sudan, and invites reflection from external actors on how we engage. The first in the series looks at Just Governance.

With all of the belly laughter and back slapping it’s easy to forget that everyone in the room has been affected by the ongoing tribal war, on different sides. The eleven in attendance make up (most of) Peace Canal’s peacebuilding team, drawn together from the Nuer, Dinka and Murle communities of Lakes State and Jonglei-GPAA. 

Peace Canal emerged as an experiment through the first phase of the Peacebuilding Opportunities Fund. There’s nothing new about the concept of a national NGO, but the advent of Peace Canal has led down a path that aims to push the envelope on structural barriers for national entities in South Sudan: strengthening core funding, ensuring competitive remuneration, freeing internal bandwidth to think about delivery strategy, and promoting advocacy for genuinely community-driven agendas.