Francesco Giumelli & Annette Weber. Global Governance. Volume 28, Issue 2, April-June 2022.
This article analyzes the role of UN sanctions in the context of peace negotiations in South Sudan from the outbreak of the civil war in December 2013 until the signing of the peace agreement in August 2015. Drawing on the literature regarding third-party intervention in civil wars, it explores whether the UN sanctions regime—established in March 2015—was conceived as an instrument of leverage to get the parties to agree to a settlement. The article asks two questions: Have sanctions and mediation been coordinated? Has the interlink between sanctions and mediation been successful? First, there has been little coordination between sanctions and mediation. Second, UN sanctions did not appear to play a crucial role in the mediation process. This analysis is based on desk research and nineteen interviews with officials from the UN, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and other regional actors conducted between 2017 and 2018.
Introduction
International conflicts and crises are often mitigated, and sometimes resolved, through mediation processes. Indeed, sanctions can be adopted to change the cost-benefit analyses of parties/actors, thus supporting mediation processes. As a result, the academic literature should be rich with contributions on how the interplay between sanctions and mediation contributes to peace agreements. Instead, the interaction between sanctions and mediation has largely remained unexplored in the literature; the relative weight of such connections has been barely touched on. This research, together with the other contributions to this special section, intends to narrow this research gap.
This article aims to explore the interplay between sanctions and the mediation process in the case of South Sudan in the early phase of the crisis in December 2013 continuing up until August 2015, when the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCISS) was signed. Sanctions complemented the mediation process in being a tool to put political pressure on the warring parties, and especially on South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir. The United Nations imposed a travel ban and a freeze of assets on six individuals directly responsible for human rights violations in July 2015 and threatened the imposition of targeted sanctions on Kiir if he refused to sign ARCISS.
In analyzing the conflict phase, we ask whether the adoption of sanctions was coordinated with the regional actors involved in the mediation process, mainly Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda, and, in any event, whether the utilization of sanctions was a decisive factor leading Kiir to sign ARCISS. We make two arguments. First, coordination between those imposing sanctions and the regional actors involved in the mediation process was minimal. Second, although Kiir signed the agreement after sanctions were discussed at the UN Security Council (UNSC), these measures did not appear to play a crucial role in the mediation process. The analysis suggests that sanctions were a symptom of growing US pressure on the regional actors to break the stalemate in the mediation process. But sanctions per se did not change the dynamics of it because the warring parties’ disagreements made it unlikely that these measures would have had a tangible impact. The empirical data was collected during the years 2017 and 2018, via nineteen semistructured interviews with various stakeholders, actors involved in the mediation process, representatives of neighboring states, members of the Sanctions Committee, members of the Panel of Experts, and officials from the UN, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and other regional organizations. Interviews were carried out under confidentiality agreements, therefore we disclose the rank of interviewee and date of each interview only. We provide a numbered list of the interviews in Table 1 for this purpose. The primary data we gathered was complemented by secondary sources on the conflict and the mediation process.
The analysis is divided into five sections. First, we introduce the interplay between sanctions and mediation. Second, we present an overview of the South Sudan civil war. Third, we scrutinize the different phases of mediation and sanctions. Fourth, we discuss whether the interaction between sanctions and mediation was coordinated. Fifth, we determine the effectiveness of such interaction. Finally, we conclude by reflecting on how sanctions and mediation worked in the South Sudan case and by offering a few thoughts on how they can be best combined in future.
Sanctions, Mediation, and Third-Party Intervention
The literature on humanitarian intervention focuses largely on the military instrument, but in fact third-party intervention in conflicts most often takes place via nonmilitary means. The literature on conflict resolution discusses at length how intervention can occur, from the provision of good offices to various forms of mediation between parties. While sanctions are certainly one of the instruments short of military force in foreign policy, with a number of referrals in the literature to them being used as a negotiating tool for conflict management and resolution, there have been few studies to date that analyze the potential effects of sanctions on mediation processes.
Sanctions can, at least theoretically, have an impact thereon. Among the most commonly declared objectives here has been to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table. There are different causal mechanisms that explain this. First, the imposition of sanctions would hamper the military capacities of any side to dominate all others, so the inability to win a conflict would create an incentive to negotiate a peace agreement instead. Second, even if military superiority should exist, then the political stigma of being targeted by sanctions would undermine the subsequent possibilities to consolidate any victory by creating functioning institutions with international recognition. Thus, the winning party would be incentivized to negotiate with other international actors. Third, the evolution of the peacekeeping concept to include now peace enforcement has also affected the way in which sanctions have been used in conflict management, with instances where they have been imposed to contain or restrain one particular conflict party. For instance, it has become common practice to resort to sanctions after the signing of a peace agreement with the objective of targeting spoilers. In this scenario, sanctions are used to ensure that the latter have no other option than to engage in dialogue with the existing institutions, instead of attempting to replace them. However, preferential treatment can also take place during the course of the conflict, so that sanctions have been used to “tip the balance” in favor of one party over others.
The contribution of sanctions is dependent on the agreement of the parties involved in the mediation process, but a united front from mediators on the possibility of using sanctions is currently rather the exception than the norm. The literature on intervention indicates that the utilization of sanctions can undermine the neutrality, and therefore the legitimacy, of the intervening force. It is to be expected, then, that mediators would be skeptical about relying on sanctions as a device to facilitate the peace process. In fact, sanctions threaten the neutrality of interventions because often parties are unevenly affected—which partly explains why sanctions are rarely linked to mediation processes. When mediators are not perceived to be legitimate then the parties, even more so if sanctioned, can experience a “rally-around-the-flag” effect. In general, the parties in conflict would become more intransigent and the mediation more complicated. Instead, the opposite would occur should mediation be accepted by all parties who can participate in an inclusive process hereof. In brief, sanctions—and especially threats of their imposition—are more likely to be taken seriously if the mediation team agrees on how these measures ought to best complement a given mediation process.
Another relevant aspect here is the strategic versus tactical divide. Drawing from the literature on policy implementation, it becomes obvious how the theoretical link (or lack of it) between sanctions and mediation at the strategic level can translate into implementation challenges at the tactical one. This draws from the literature holding that the effective utilization of sanctions depends heavily on the degree of cooperation existing between relevant stakeholders. This means that when sanctions are designed to interact strategically with mediation in a certain way, the combination of decisions made by the actors implementing the strategy at the various levels closer to the conflict/crisis (tactical level) can de facto alter the policy in such a way as to create the opposite effects. This gap can be due to either diverging interests or norms across involved parties, horizontally (the different parties in conflict) and vertically (the different level of governments within each party may have diverging ideas on how to proceed). In other words, sanctions have an impact not only if perceived as legitimate (see our point above about neutrality), but also if they enjoy strong support from the regional actors who will have to implement the measures. Without that support, expectations that sanctions can have any serious impact are low.
In light of these tensions, the case of South Sudan can contribute to clarifying some of the current cul-de-sacs in the debate and help further theorize the connections between sanctions and mediation. Two key questions are pertinent here. First, was the interaction between sanctions and mediation planned? While we could posit coordination in theory, we need to explore the degree to which this interaction was either actively pursued, loosely mentioned, or neglected altogether. Second, did this interaction (or the lack thereof) have an effect on the mediation process? In making this assessment, we consider if and how the internal coherence of the mediation team and the support (or lack of it) of regional actors for sanctions affected the perceptions of the parties in conflict.
The Beginning of the South Sudan Crisis
South Sudan gained its independence in 2011 after more than twenty years of armed struggle by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) against the government in Khartoum. Being the mediator since the early 1990s, in 2002 IGAD resumed peace talks between the National Congress Party (NCP, the successor to the National Islamic Front) government in Khartoum and the SPLM/A. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in 2005 leading to a Government of National Unity of Sudan, far-reaching autonomy for the South, and a referendum on independence in 2010. In 2011, South Sudan became independent—and herewith the youngest country in Africa was born. With the aim to consolidate the establishment of new functioning state institutions, the CPA paid special attention to the involvement of the two larger ethnic groups in South Sudan, the Dinka and the Nuer, who had their respective institutional representation in two negotiating parties, the Government of Sudan and the SPLM/A. Opposition parties, civil society, as well as other voices and armed groups were not included, which exacerbated the interethnic tensions already existing in the country. This resulted in a lack of ownership of the CPA by these excluded groups, as well as serving to reinforce the conviction of the NCP and SPLM/A that they were the only legitimate custodians of the future of their countries.
The SPLM/A was either unwilling or unable to transform from an armed movement into a civilian government; in the early years after independence not much effort was given to the development of the country or to the social stability or human security of its citizens. The international community at large continued to support the state-building process, with little ownership by the political elite in Juba. We use the term international community to refer to all interested and involved parties at the global level—the UNSC’s member states, IGAD’s constituent countries, and relevant regional actors, among others. The political system functioned as a marketplace for private gain, as did the security structure. All former armed groups were included in the national army, yet demobilization programs failed. Politics became transactional. Political positions as well as private armies were bought with state revenues, leading to fragmented and increasingly ethicized warlord structures. Demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration failed postindependence. In fact, new militias were recruited along ethnic lines and used alongside the oversized national army, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
The situation deteriorated in 2013 through the culmination of several different factors. First, the externalization of state building led to weak state capacities for a transition to civilian government. Second, state institutions increasingly pursued personal, ethnic, and regional interests as opposed to an agenda encompassing the country as a whole. A constitutional debate about the structure of the state, federalism, the decentralization of power, and the number of federal states became highly conflictive. At the outset of the conflict in 2013 Kiir was perceived to be in favor of a more centralized system of rule, arguing that the unity of South Sudan needed to be built first. Meanwhile, Vice President Riek Machar appeared to support a more federal system. However, this issue remains unresolved almost eight years later. Finally, the belief that the international community in its various forms would remain the caretaker of the people widened the gap between the interests of the general population and the action of their leaders.
When war broke out on the night of 15 December 2013, the national army was split in two, with one side pledging allegiance to Kiir, a Dinka. The other faction aligned with Machar, who is Nuer. Fighting erupted between the Dinka and Nuer within the Presidential Guard, intensifying throughout the following day. Dressed in full military regalia, Kiir announced on national television that there was a coup attempt under way and that he had the situation under control. While Kiir and Machar were the main actors at the beginning of the crisis and behind the outbreak of war, the complexity of the situation increased gradually over time, with the split along ethnic lines permeating the government and security apparatus now spreading throughout the country at large.
From the early phases of the crisis, several regional and international actors began to voice their opinions and to take action. The next section describes the type of third-party intervention that occurred in the crisis, with special attention devoted to mediation and sanctions.
Third-Party Intervention: An Analysis of Mediation and Sanctions
Third-party intervention started immediately after the outbreak of the crisis in December 2013, with swift calls to halt the violence. Both international efforts to mediate the conflict and calls for sanctions emerged shortly thereafter. We identify four phases to the mediation efforts and three to sanctions measures, as discussed below.
Mediation Efforts
We can identify four phases in the mediation process that are loosely related to the sequencing of how sanctions have been used over time by the United Nations. There is an opening phase where regional heads of states decided to make use of a regional mediation effort; this is followed by two classic mediation phases of engagement with the warring sides followed by the closing phase, where a mediated agreement is signed and the implementation of the peace agreement determines the end of the mediation process.
The response of the regional and international community after the breakout of violence in Juba on 15 December 2013 was immediate. Hilde Johnson, special representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) and head of the UN Mission in South Sudan contacted Kiir as well as Machar during the night of 15 to 16 December, also Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta had called Kiir in the night. They pressed for a political solution and the end of violence. The IGAD Council of Ministers, led by the Ethiopian foreign minister, also undertook a three-day visit to Juba from 19 to 21 December 2013. Only after it became clear that there was no appetite for immediate talks, the opposing interests by regional actors made a common approach and coordination impossible.
The first phase lasted from 19 December 2013 to 6 January 2014 when the regional economic community IGAD responded to the violence, mandated the mediation, and prepared the mediation process. Here, the regional governments acted swiftly to the crisis, yet the fact that IGAD could not agree on one envoy already indicated that the region was not united on the matter.
The initiating phase, however, already reflected divergent positions of regional states vis-a-vis the conflict in South Sudan. The different interests of regional powers and the interdependence between South Sudan is central to the perpetuation of the crisis there. Of special importance, here, were the roles of Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda because they faced either economic impacts (all four countries) or consequences from refugee influxes (Ethiopia and Uganda).
The second phase lasted from 7 January 2014, when talks started, until 23 January 2014, when the respective parties signed the Cessation of Hostility (CoH) agreement. This phase focused on achieving a CoH, addressing the issue of cabinet and SPLM party members who had been detained, and setting the stage for mediation. Consequently, a Joint Technical Committee and a Monitoring and Verification Mechanism were set up as provided for in the CoH agreement. This second phase showed united efforts taking place, most likely being streamlined by the achievable goal of the CoH—even though diverging regional interests had a detrimental effect on the peace process inside South Sudan. The lead mediators concentrated on their respective positions visa-vis the warring parties. Instead of benefiting from the relations with both warring parties, mediation split and engaged in parallel rather than unified efforts. Furthermore, the unilateral engagement of several regional heads of state, as well as other dialogue formats not being coordinated, led to little progress occurring.
The third phase lasted from February 2014 until 2 February 2015, when the parties signed an intermediary agreement on the formation of a Transitional Government of National Unity (TGNU). This phase, starting after the signature of the CoH and an agreement on the status of detainees and lasting until the TGNU’s inception, involved substantive negotiations, with a focus on the formation of a broad-based government. The political nature of this phase made the mediation process more challenging and highlighted further the divergent regional interests regarding the resolution of the crisis in South Sudan. The Government of South Sudan acted increasingly hostile to United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), accusing it of sheltering terrorists. With the onset of war in 2013, UNMISS had provided shelter for civilians fleeing targeted ethnic killings by government forces. Besides the UN, international actors such as the United States called on the warring parties to refrain from using violence against civilians and return to the negotiating table.
The fourth phase lasted from March 2015, when a new IGAD-led mediation initiative was announced, up to the signature of ARCISS in August 2015. The objective in this phase was to “close the deal” and get parties to sign a comprehensive peace agreement. This mediation phase emerged out of the realization that IGAD-facilitated negotiations were insufficient to get the warring parties to sign an agreement; consequently, IGAD-Plus was launched on 14 June 2015. IGAD-Plus meant IGAD—namely, the Horn of Africa/East Africa community (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda)—plus the representatives of the African Union (AU) 5 (Algeria, Chad, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa), the AU commission, China, the European Union (EU), the Troika (Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States), and the UN. These latter actors became the outer ring around IG AD, with their presence hoping to strengthen the political clout of the negotiations.
From September 2015 onward, we consider the mediation process concluded since the peace agreement was signed and implementation had commenced. The IGAD special envoys were not involved in the implementation of ARCISS. Equally, the regional commitments of and the pressure from the guarantors soon hereafter wore off.
Sanctions
The threat of sanctions was raised already in December 2013, but did not actually materialize until March 2015. We identify, as noted earlier, three phases here. First, sanctions were mentioned already by the AU’s Peace and UNSC in December 2013, and the EU followed suit shortly after that. In the course of 2014, the EU and the United States decided to impose some limited sanctions. The EU decision to extend the arms embargo in force on Sudan to South Sudan via Council Decision 423 preceded the conflict, however. Meanwhile, in March 2014 the EU and the United States imposed a travel ban and assets freezes on two individuals each.
The second phase of sanctions started in the spring of 2015, after a failed attempt by China and the IGAD mediators to advance the peace process with the deadline of 5 March 2015 for an agreement to be made by the parties looming. The Security Council thus decided to impose asset freezes and travel bans on those obstructing the peace process. The Security Council did not blacklist anyone, but sanctioning measures were formally put in place with Resolution 2206 of 3 March 2015—thus coming months after the EU and the United States had first imposed restrictive measures on a handful of individuals.
The third phase of sanctions began on 1 July 2015, with the first travel bans and asset freezes. The Sanctions Committee listed six military officials responsible for attacks on civilians: Gabriel Jok Riak, Marial Chanuong Yol Mangok, and Santino Deng Wol on the side of the government (SPLM/A) and James Koang Chuol, Simon Gatwech Dual, and Peter Gadet on side of Machar’s SPLM/A-IO.
In August 2015 sanctions were imposed to coerce Kiir into signing ARCISS. On 19 August, two days after ARCISS had been signed by Machar, the United States circulated a draft resolution at the UNSC that included the threat of further sanctions—among them an arms embargo—if the agreement had not been signed by 1 September 2015. ARCISS was already signed by Kiir on 25 August though, so no further sanctions needed to be imposed before the agreement’s implementation phase began. After the signing of the agreement, a new phase of the conflict began because the IGAD special envoys ended their engagement and the role of the international community was supposed to now focus on ARCISS’s monitoring and implementation.
Were Mediation Efforts and Sanctions Coordinated?
As mentioned, the analysis is structured around two core questions. The first is whether the utilization of sanctions was coordinated with mediation efforts in the South Sudan case. Figure 1 below summarizes the four phases of mediation and three of sanctions along a time line running from December 2013 until August 2015.
While the imposition of sanctions (Phases 2 and 3) overlapped temporally with the fourth phase of mediation, we argue that coordination was ultimately rather weak. There is an important difference in the way in which the mediation process and sanctions interacted in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Initially, the mediation team seems to have rejected the idea of relying on sanctions, but this reluctance weakened over time. Some interviewees expressed disappointment in terms of the manner in which sanctions were underutilized in sustaining mediation efforts—both before and after the signing of the peace agreement. At the same time, the South Sudan case shows the limitations of relying on sanctions in mediation processes when it comes to protracted conflict beset by regional divisions and where the UN’s role lacks legitimacy. Disagreements on the use of sanctions among UN members, the mediation partners, and regional actors convinced conflict parties that such measures were unlikely to be used; should they be, they would not have had serious consequences. Conflict parties assumed that without the support of regional actors, any sanctions decided on by the UNSC would have been either light or not even implemented.
Perhaps one of the most crucial difficulties was the divisions existing between the three IGAD special envoys and their teams. A couple of interviewees stressed that the internal difficulties of the mediation teams made any coordination impossible. Others reported that the mediators did not consult among themselves. Another interviewee pointed out, meanwhile, how the mediation team was split on the imposition of sanctions: Ethiopia (Seyoum Mesfin) in favor, Sudan (Mohammed Ahmed Moustafa El Dabi) in between, and Kenya (Lazaro Sumbeiywo) against.
The I GAD special envoys’ mediation efforts were at times complicated by unilateral initiatives by IGAD member states and by frequent meetings of IGAD heads of state. At times, the UNSC was engaged to build leverage in the mediation process: for example, in June 2014 lead mediator Mesfin went to New York to lobby the UNSC in favor of imposing sanctions. However, the heads of state in the region were not willing to comply. As insiders from within the mediation process as well as the UNSC attested, the Permanent Five of the UNSC (P5) and IGAD-Plus members prioritized other political calculations over risking relationships on behalf of the South Sudan cause. Some argued that the threat of escalating sanctions to the level of an arms embargo and to individually punishing the president and members of his government had become empty threats. The warring parties on the ground understood that the countries of the region would not risk their monetary interests in South Sudan and beyond, and that the UNSC would not be willing to push for a UN arms embargo.
Early on in the conflict, European diplomats sought support from the United States to push for such an embargo; the Barack Obama administration remained reluctant to agree, however. Others argued that openly threatening an arms embargo would be a potent bargaining chip, whereas the implementation would be a step too far and no longer an active negotiation card. China and Russia announced that they would not veto an arms embargo, but would rather have the African nonpermanent members of the UNSC take the lead on this matter. Moreover, the existing EU arms embargo was not enough to reduce the inflow of weapons to the region, as illustrated by the Chinese as well as Israeli arms shipments entering it In the absence of a UNSC arms embargo, the warring parties retained an incentive to seek a military solution to the conflict—or, at least, it kept the military option on the table.
While those who recommended the utilization of sanctions intended to support the mediation process, Sumbeiywo as well as certain regional actors were not wholly in favor of this initiative. Ethiopia, backing a federal state accommodating the rights of all ethnic groups and strengthening regional power, hoped to reduce the centralist agenda of Kiir by sanctions hitting the South Sudanese government harder than the SPLM/A-IO. For Kenya and Uganda, on the other hand, sanctions could have economic implications for their own economies, for the banking sector, as well as for real estate owned by the South Sudanese elite. Ultimately, the imposition of sanctions turned out to be the product of growing frustration in New York rather than of a coordinated effort between mediators.
The region was divided in its analysis of the conflict, political proximity to the warring parties, and differences in opinion on the usage and usefulness of sanctions. With two heads of states having been the object of attention of the International Criminal Court (ICC)—President Omar Bashir of Sudan indicted (ICC, 2022) and Uhuru Kenyatta investigated by the body (ICC, 2022b), respectively—the anti-Western and anti-UN sentiments coming from Juba found resonance regionally. This reduced the effect of shaming for those being threatened with or targeted by sanctions. The differing interests of neighboring countries in the conflict posed an increasing difficulty for efforts at mediation and sanctioning: Kenya’s own economic interests led to its nonimplementation of the sanctions; Uganda and Sudan had a different agenda, and seemed willing to implement sanctions only selectively; Ethiopia was alone in supporting such measures. Therefore, the mediation team became increasingly reflective of the adverse regional dynamics, resulting in fragmentation between the special envoys and parallel mediation strands.
The role of the UN was also called into question after the relationship between the Government of South Sudan and UNMISS turned sour, and thus UN mechanisms of intervention were met with distrust. The relationship between the UN and the Government of South Sudan deteriorated gradually after the outbreak of violence. The falling out between Kiir and UNMISS turned the UN in general into what was increasingly perceived as an object of aggression, leading to its rejection by the government in Juba.
Different views within the mediation team also led to weak collaboration with regional actors and, ultimately, with the UNSC. Indeed, sanctions were suggested by the AU’s Peace and Security Council on several occasions, sometimes on the basis of strong and decisive wording. However several interviewees pointed to the fact that IGAD itself did not have one unified front on the crisis in South Sudan; consequently, members of the mediation team had divergent views on resorting to sanctions. The belief that a peace agreement with a power-sharing clause would be in the best interests of the two warring parties led to great reluctance to use sanctions as part of the mediation. The fear was that the threat of sanctions would undermine the process, while their implementation would remove an important instrument from the mediation process.
There were multiple occasions on which the mediation team could have coordinated with the UNSC regarding sanctions. Since the mediation process was led by the regional organization IGAD, and not by the UN, the latter’s officials were not mediators—even if they were frequently consulted regarding, and some of them engaged with, the crisis in South Sudan. SRSG Johnson was influential after the immediate outbreak of the conflict because of her decision to provide shelter to civilians fleeing from ethnic violence and after alerting the UNSC and the wider international community to the severity of events. UN officials concerned with the human rights situation were more favorable to the imposition of sanctions. This was the case for Herve Ladsous, under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, and for Ivan Simonovic, assistant secretary-general for human rights. Reporting to the UNSC on the evolution of the situation in South Sudan, both recommended that sanctions be imposed to constrain any attempted military resolution to the conflict by the warring parties.
Other figures, such as SRSGs Johnson and Ellen Margrethe L0J, UN special envoy to the AU and former special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan Haile Menkerios, and his liaison person in the IGAD mediation process all emphasized the continuous engagement of the UN in the South Sudan peace process. Moreover, there were fourteen UNSC resolutions passed on South Sudan from the outbreak of violence in December 2013 until ARCISS in August 2015. The strategy has always been to facilitate a resolution to the crisis that comes from the region itself, explaining why UN officials did not play a leading role in the coordination and application of sanctions and mediation.
However, our interviews unanimously confirmed that they were not aware of major coordination efforts between the IGAD special envoys and the UNSC. On the one hand, the UNSC’s perception was of a divided and confused mediation process. On the other, insiders to the mediation team complained about the lack of consensus and political backing from more robust UN engagement in the South Sudan case. In their view, the UNSC was not willing to risk political estrangement on more important bargaining issues.
Discussing Integration and Effectiveness
Having discussed the coordination between sanctions and mediation, now we ask how that affected the outcome of negotiations. In other words, did the use of sanctions in the mediation process contribute to bringing the parties to the negotiating table? We argue that the relative impact of sanctions on the signing of ARCISS was negligible at best, and in any event unclear. Many of the interviewees were of the same opinion. Although the timing of the threat of sanctions and the signing of the agreement seem to suggest a relative importance to these measures, as discussed in the UNSC, the complacency from the region/I GAD indicates sanctions’ lack of influence on the overall process. In fact, sanctions created even a perverse incentive for the conflict parties, who operated in such a way as to have sanctions lifted rather than to work toward the resolution of the conflict per se.
There are diverging opinions on the role of sanctions in general, and on the measures imposed by the United States and the EU up until that moment. On the one hand, supporters of sanctions would point to the fact that the threat thereof increased the pressure on Kiir to sign the peace agreement in August 2015. Without the threat of an arms embargo and sanctions targeting the South Sudanese president himself, Kiir might not have signed the agreement. From this angle, the set of (rather light) sanctions imposed until that moment would have been a necessary yet insufficient condition to contribute to the credibility of the threat of further sanctions. This is not about the sanctions that had been actually imposed, but the looming threat of the arms embargo. According to some of the interviewees, the threat of the arms embargo was rather discomforting for the government especially, because it could have hampered the possibility to purchase weapons while the opposition could have relied on the illegal market instead. The arms embargo was not imposed, among other reasons, because its uneven impact was clear. As a senior US administration official noted, “We have to find tools that affect the two parties equally, and the arms embargo is more one-sided than two-sided.”
Indeed, the draft text of the resolution circulated in August indicated both sanctions to be imposed on ‘the’ (quote from the text) senior political leader of the government of South Sudan and a potential referral to the ICC. One interlocutor insisted on the “surprise factor” of sanctions imposed by the UN in 2015. According to the interviewee, the South Sudanese parties did not expect the UNSC to reach a consensus on the imposition of sanctions and this created anxiety about an arms embargo, above anything else, being imposed. Possibly, the unanimous approval of sanctions earlier in 2015 may have affected the expectation and the credibility of the threat to impose further such measures.
The divisions between the various external parties involved in the South Sudan conflict, in any case contributed to the undermining of the expectation that sanctions would have been a serious problem for the parties in conflict in the near future. First, the short list of designees contributed to weakening the message that the UNSC intended to send to the parties; namely, that the UN was concerned about and determined to resolve the conflict. Instead, light sanctions contributed to the belief that the UNSC was deadlocked, which would explain the lack of further listing after July 2015, and that the solution could have come only from within the local political milieu. While there are different explanations for the low level of coordination, all interviewees agreed that the UNSC and the IGAD mediation team could not rely on any consensus and joint action by the UNSC and the region to seriously engage with sanctions, the arms embargo, and its implementation. In other words, precisely because the sanctions already imposed were rather light, the slim chances of further such measures being imposed undermined the subsequent leveraging ability of the threat to escalate these measures—because if the UN wanted to do that, then it would have done so already.
The external support for a UN-led mediation process involving sanctions was also weak. First, the credibility of the UN was questioned in the region, which points to the fact that sanctions are only one factor in building credible threats of punishment. A sanctions regime not coordinated with IGAD would also undermine the level of regional engagement. The increasing hostility of the South Sudanese government toward the UN specifically—but also international initiatives more generally, as demonstrated by the Kenyan-led initiative of African signatories to the Rome Statute leaving the ICC—convinced the government of South Sudan that there would be no regional pressure to implement sanctions. Indeed, local regional actors were critical of punitive measures by the UN and international criminal law bodies. This resulted in a lack of implementation of the anyway light sanctions targeted at the six commanders of the SPLM/A and SPLM/A-IO respectively. For example, it appears that targeted individuals managed to travel throughout the region, which fostered the realization that sanctions had no effect on the lives of those targeted. Additionally, it was also reported that the earlier mentioned individuals Yol (commander of the Presidential Guard) and Riak (SPLA Sector One commander) were still operating “active bank accounts at the Kenya Commercial Bank in South Sudan in the late summer of 2015.”
Conclusion
This contribution to the special section explored the various underinvestigated interactive effects between sanctions and mediation processes. Specifically, it dealt with the situations in which sanctions are utilized to facilitate/support a given mediation process, focusing on the case of South Sudan. The analysis revolved around two main research questions.
First, we asked whether mediation and sanctions were coordinated in the South Sudan case. The answer according to our analysis is negative. Second, we asked whether sanctions helped facilitate the mediation process. If the objective of mediation efforts was to bring the parties to the negotiating table and sign the ARCISS peace agreement, then the impact of sanctions was either negligible or unclear. Significantly, all interviewees confirmed that sanctions were not seen as a game-changer in the decision by Kiir to sign the agreement, which was due rather to growing pressure from the United States on the region.
The disagreement among external parties to the conflict in South Sudan weakened the threat of sanctions. The actors on the ground did not expect neighboring countries to implement such measures. The lead organization in the mediation process, IGAD, was not the driving force behind sanctions. These measures were proposed and implemented instead by the EU, the United States, and later the UNSC, making reference to the mediation process—but without seriously coordinating with IGAD, let alone being part of a cohesive strategy encompassing different intervention tools.
Additionally, there were disagreements among local actors regarding the use and usefulness of sanctions. Kenya, the main supporter of Kiir, opposed such measures, whereas Ethiopia, hosting the opponent to South Sudan’s president, Machar, was in favor of imposing sanctions. These positions also informed the style of engagement of the two lead mediators. Based on the understanding that any enforcement of sanctions would have relied on the will of neighboring countries, where bank accounts and assets were located, the risk thereof was low; sanctions were therefore not perceived as a weighty instrument.
The South Sudan case is representative for all crises characterized by a divided international community and, especially, by the diverging interests of regional actors. Better coordination between sanctions and mediation teams could have led to different decisions; for instance, by ensuring the better identification of targets, by imposing harsher measures, or by avoiding sanctions’ use altogether. Eventually, the peace agreement signed by Kiir and Machar did not hold, which suggests that the lack of coordination between sanctions and mediation led to the creation of the wrong incentives for the parties in conflict to cease hostilities if the objective was to end them once and for all. Possibly, the South Sudan case also suggests that sanctions may not be a viable option to use in peace processes where coordination with regional actors is not within reach and imposition on the main parties involved in conflict is not possible.
When secondary sanctions on regional actors as well as on relevant conflict parties are not an option, then sanctions forming part of mediation processes might be best suited to targeting spoilers alone.