Key lessons learned on international engagement

This briefing paper summarises shifts in international engagement in South Sudan from humanitarian aid to development and institution-building, and then back again to crisis response. The findings emerge from the recent report, Trajectories of international engagement with state and local actors: Evidence from South Sudan [^] , as well as other SLRC South Sudan research over the life of the programme. In the wake of South Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, optimism abounded that investment in state-building would produce numerous benefits including peace, stability, growth and economic opportunities. But such optimism proved to be unfounded. This paper analyses why current aid frameworks have been mostly unsuccessful in their efforts to promote sustainable institutions and peace in South Sudan. The central argument is that aid actors largely failed because they applied technical solutions to political problems. What is needed is a rethink in approaches, modalities, and time frames, and better use of contextual and political analysis, in order to avoid similar failures in the future

Livelihoods and conflict in South Sudan

More than five million people in South Sudan are currently in urgent need of humanitarian aid, with nearly one-and-a-half million displaced and another one million refugees. These figures indicate large-scale loss of lives and extreme disruption to livelihoods, which will take decades or generations to recover from. Yet livelihoods are often just expected to recover in a post-conflict environment. Findings from six years of research by SLRC do not support this argument; in some areas of South Sudan, support for livelihoods may have even been better during conflict. This briefing paper recommends a rethink in the way that aid actors approach questions of recovery and livelihood. Rather than a simplistic either/ or approach, what is needed is a much more localised and deeper analysis of conflict, inter-communal grievances and inter-communal relations

Statebuilding and legitimacy: experiences of South Sudan

In 2005, the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement / Army concluded a peace agreement, formally ending the 22-year-old civil war. Following a referendum, South Sudan seceded; donors put billions toward the new state and Sudan’s recovery, supporting – among other things – the development of new state institutions for both countries. However, in December 2013, war broke out again in South Sudan. Prevalent approaches to state building – such as those employed in Sudan and South Sudan from 2005 to 2013 – focused mainly on infrastructure and bureaucracy, based on the underlying assumption that service delivery fosters state legitimacy. Recent research, however, questions this assumption, arguing that it ignores the role that political structures, ideas and history play in legitimization or de-legitimization of the state. This report uses South Sudan as an example to interrogate people’s perceptions of the state, asking what – if not service delivery – fosters state legitimacy. This research was conducted under the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC), a six-year, eight-country research study, led by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London. SLRC investigates livelihoods, access to basic services, and social protection in fragile and conflict-affected situations. The research is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DfID), Irish Aid, and the European Community (EC). The Feinstein International Center leads SLRC research in South Sudan and Uganda in addition to its participation in the Sierra Leone research

May Measurement Month 2018: a pragmatic global screening campaign to raise awareness of blood pressure by the International Society of Hypertension

Aims Raised blood pressure (BP) is the biggest contributor to mortality and disease burden worldwide and fewer than half of those with hypertension are aware of it. May Measurement Month (MMM) is a global campaign set up in 2017, to raise awareness of high BP and as a pragmatic solution to a lack of formal screening worldwide. The 2018 campaign was expanded, aiming to include more participants and countries. Methods and results Eighty-nine countries participated in MMM 2018. Volunteers (≥18 years) were recruited through opportunistic sampling at a variety of screening sites. Each participant had three BP measurements and completed a questionnaire on demographic, lifestyle, and environmental factors. Hypertension was defined as a systolic BP ≥140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥90 mmHg, or taking antihypertensive medication. In total, 74.9% of screenees provided three BP readings. Multiple imputation using chained equations was used to impute missing readings. 1 504 963 individuals (mean age 45.3 years; 52.4% female) were screened. After multiple imputation, 502 079 (33.4%) individuals had hypertension, of whom 59.5% were aware of their diagnosis and 55.3% were taking antihypertensive medication. Of those on medication, 60.0% were controlled and of all hypertensives, 33.2% were controlled. We detected 224 285 individuals with untreated hypertension and 111 214 individuals with inadequately treated (systolic BP ≥ 140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥ 90 mmHg) hypertension. Conclusion May Measurement Month expanded significantly compared with 2017, including more participants in more countries. The campaign identified over 335 000 adults with untreated or inadequately treated hypertension. In the absence of systematic screening programmes, MMM was effective at raising awareness at least among these individuals at risk

Trajectories of International Engagement with State and Local Actors: Evidence from South Sudan

External actors have been engaged in what is now South Sudan from the colonial era through to the present day, providing humanitarian and development assistance and exerting political pressure during and since the second civil war that has helped to protect people, legitimize the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), broker the peace agreements leading to independence, and undergird the new state of South Sudan. After the civil war and especially at independence, many international actors approached South Sudan as a tabula rasa, ready for peace and development; since then, engagement has shifted back to large-scale humanitarian efforts and crisis response. This paper investigates how international actors have engaged with the South Sudanese state and local actors in order to improve access to basic services and build state capacity to deliver those services and provide social protection and livelihood support, what the impacts of such engagement have been, and what aid actors can learn from this history. The paper draws on four years of fieldwork by the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC), with a focus on Jonglei State

Trajectories of international engagement with state and local actors: Evidence from South Sudan

What can international aid policymakers and practitioners learn from the history of international engagement with South Sudan prior to and during the current conflict? This paper traces shifts in international engagement in the country from humanitarian aid to development and institution-building, and then back again to crisis response. It considers the implications of these shifts for understanding trends in service provision, social protection and livelihoods support specifically, and recovery and development more generally. The analysis shows that current aid frameworks have been largely unsuccessful in their efforts to promote sustainable institutions and peace in South Sudan, primarily because they applied technical solutions to political problems. The authors argue that aid actors must rethink their own approaches, modalities, and time frames, and better use contextual and political analysis, in order to avoid similar failures in the future

Complexities of service delivery and state-building

Approximately 4.75 billion USD of international aid money was spent in South Sudan between 2012 and 2014 alone. Yet despite the intense international engagement in institution-building, supposedly to help improve people’s perceptions of governance, South Sudan descended into armed conflict in 2013. The SLRC South Sudan programme has been working since 2012 to identify and understand the realities of access to basic services and perceptions of governance in post-independence South Sudan. This paper describes the findings from research carried out in several areas of South Sudan in the context of armed conflict and raiding. The findings show that despite state-building efforts, service delivery remained inadequate in remote areas and that the interface between service delivery and people’s perceptions of the state is complex. The authors recommend that the highly political nature of state-building and post-conflict transformation processes should be more systematically taken into account by external actors involved in South Sudan

Automatic Calibration Using a Modified Genetic Algorithm for Millimeter-Wave Antenna Modules in MIMO Systems

This study proposes a method for designing and calibrating a millimeter-wave (mm-wave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna module. Herein, we adopt a design example involving a 64-element MIMO antenna array arranged in a triangular lattice (instead of the commonly used rectangular lattice) to achieve a 3°dB enhancement in effective isotropic radiated power. Analyzing a grating lobe diagram indicates a scan volume of ±60°/±45° in the azimuth/elevation direction. To calibrate the massive mm-wave MIMO antenna module, we propose a modified genetic algorithm to align the amplitude/phase of the transmitting/receiving signal of the module to reduce the time required for the calibration process. Finally, we conducted a simple experiment to validate the proposed method

Synthesis, structures, and reactions of gas-phase actinide oxide complexes: Relative stabilities and An oxidation states in AnO₃(NO₃)₂⁻ (An = U, Np, Pu)

International audienc