Frontline Insights #2 May – South Sudan: Renewed Armed Conflict, Political Upheaval, and the Unravelling of the Peace Agreement

For more than a decade, armed conflict in South Sudan has subjected women, men, and children to repeated and brutal acts of violence, massive displacement, loss, and profound hardship, entrenching insecurity across the country while deepening one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises.

Since January 2025, however, the crisis in South Sudan has taken a form that falls outside the assumptions on which the international response to address it was initially built. This rupture is visible in several specific events.

Since early March 2025, the two main signatories to the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) have been fighting one another; the
government – with foreign air support – is conducting a sustained aerial campaign resulting in grave civilian harm; the first domestic prosecution for crimes against humanity in South Sudan’s history has been brought against the head of the other R-ARCSS signatory; the peace agreement itself is being formally dismantled; and politically connected private actors have all but captured the state’s revenue collection apparatus.

Read more about these developments and their legal impact on the second issue of our series “Frontline Insights”.