*Some pseudonyms are used to guard the identities of interviewees.
“I saw a lot of suffering.” The outdated man, Lokwi, gestures in direction of the lady cooking beside their hut as he talks. “The husband of this woman … was killed here.”
The girl is Lokwi’s sister-in-law. He’s recalling the day in 1988 when his brother was killed by troopers from the Sudan Individuals’s Liberation Military (SPLA). Lokwi was nonetheless a toddler when the SPLA captured the city of Kapoeta and surrounding settlements, the place he lived along with his household. The day his brother was killed, everyone was pressured to go away:
There was nothing good that day … They burned all of the villages and the troopers attacked the civilians. Individuals had been scattered.
Map of South Sudan.
Bogdan Serban/Alamy Inventory Vector
South Sudan – a central African nation of round 11.5 million folks break up in half by the White Nile – suffered a long time of battle previous to gaining independence from the remainder of Sudan in 2011. Whereas independence introduced optimism, this was thwarted two years later by inside disputes among the many ruling events that led to a resurgence of the violence.
Whereas a ceasefire was brokered in 2018 and a power-sharing settlement signed between opposing political factions, there was an absence of political will to implement it. The dire financial state of affairs, worsening meals insecurity pushed by local weather change and political instability, and legacies of ethnic rivalries proceed to perpetuate ethnically motivated violence and mistrust between communities. In April, the top of the UN mission in South Sudan, Nicholas Haysom, warned that the world’s youngest nation is as soon as once more on the point of civil struggle.
Amid this resurgence of violence, Lokwi – who’s from the Toposa group – continues to be haunted by recollections of the assault that killed his brother. Sitting beneath the shade of a tree within the village the place it passed off, he explains how he fled into the bush and survived for days on wild fruit till, ravenous, he managed to get to the city of Narus, the place he was given some meals by an area Dinka man.
When Lokwi lastly returned to his village, he discovered all the things destroyed by fireplace – huts, livestock and granaries “all burned”. Whereas he determined to start out once more and rebuild the village, his surviving brother, now dwelling in Narus, promised “never to step in this land again because of the memories and pain”.
SPLA troopers on patrol outdoors the city of Kapoeta through the lengthy civil struggle that preceded independence in 2011.
Zuma Press/Alamy Inventory Photograph
At present, Lokwi works as a peace activist in South Sudan. He spends lots of time encouraging folks in his village and the encompassing space to interact in peaceable dialogue with rival teams – and to withstand violence. With an expression of concern, he explains the difficulties he faces in dissuading younger males from participating in violence:
After I inform them to cease the battle … now we have houses and households who pay attention and keep calm, however different people just like the [male] youths don’t pay attention, they nonetheless create issues.
South Sudan’s lengthy historical past of cattle raiding
Over the course of 2024, Anna Adiyo Sebit and three different South Sudanese researchers interviewed greater than 400 women and men from South Sudan’s Toposa and Nuer communities as a part of the XCEPT programme. This programme, based mostly at King’s Faculty London, seeks to grasp the position that conflict-related trauma performs in influencing who engages in violence and who doesn’t.
In addition to inter-ethnic preventing, South Sudan has a protracted historical past of cattle raiding. Cattle are central to the pastoralist communities which make up over half of the inhabitants, together with ethnic teams such because the Dinka, Nuer and Toposa.
In most rural households, monetary capital is usually held in livestock, primarily cows – that are additionally required for dowry funds and as compensation for any crimes dedicated. This locations excessive worth on cattle possession, that means that raiding and inter-community disputes over cattle are frequent.
Amongst South Sudan’s rural households, a lot of the monetary capital is held in cows.
Diego Delso through Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SA
And whereas these disputes had been as soon as fought with sticks, stones and spears, years of political battle have left the nation awash with weapons – so cattle raiding has develop into a deadly exercise. As one outdated man who described himself as a “retired warrior” defined:
In our grandparents’ and grand ancestors’ [time], in battles or preventing we used stones, pangas, sticks, spears and arrows. [At this time there were] uncommon fights or raids waged towards [other] tribes … However after the introduction of AK-47 machine weapons, it accelerated [to] larger numbers of raids and elevated casualties in each communities.
Amongst these pastoralist communities, gender norms decide that the place ladies and women are tasked with sustaining home life, together with sustaining subsistence farming and establishing huts, males are anticipated to maintain and safe cattle. Many younger males are energetic in cattle camps, that are in areas with higher pastures the place cows are taken to graze – however could be weak to raids from different ethnic teams.
In lots of elements of rural South Sudan, younger males are anticipated to struggle to safe and shield their livelihood – together with attaining the required “bride price” for his or her marriage to go forward. Profitable cattle raids can earn a younger man respect amongst his friends.
However the trauma of experiencing violence from a younger age, as so a lot of these younger males have, is more likely to be an element within the perpetuation of varied types of violence in maturity, together with the prevalence of revenge killings.
The excessive charges of violence are additionally having a devastating impression on ladies and women in South Sudan. In response to a 2024 UN Inhabitants Fund research, 65% of girls and women have skilled some type of gender-based violence, of which intimate accomplice violence is essentially the most prevalent. The UN Mission in South Sudan has additionally reported a steep improve in sexual violence and abductions of girls and women by armed teams in 2024.
South Sudan’s excessive charges of violence are having a devastating impression on ladies and women.
Paul Jeffrey/Alamy Inventory Photograph
Conscious of the prevalence of violence towards ladies by cattle youth, Lokwi speaks of confronting the difficulty at group conferences in his village the place he brings collectively members of rival communities:
The youths are additionally a part of the assembly. Everyone is given the prospect from each communities to speak, and we inform them ‘stop killing women in the bush’. I inform them that ladies are those who give beginning to generations, and [ask]: ‘Why do you kill women?’ [Some] will really feel touched and pay attention and cease – however there are different people [for] whom killing is a part of their life … They’ll nonetheless kill ladies.
Masculine expectations
In South Sudan, like many international locations, masculine expectations that affiliate males with being the supplier or protector, and with traits of energy, stoicism and bravado, play an vital position in how males expertise trauma and the coping mechanisms they use.
Males are sometimes socialised into suppressing feelings comparable to disappointment or damage. Because of this, different shops for coping with trauma and stress can manifest in additional violent or aggressive feelings.
I’ve spent a few years researching how societal expectations of masculinity play into the way in which males reply to traumatic experiences. In narratives of wartime struggling, our understanding of male trauma is commonly overshadowed by the affiliation of masculinity with the perpetration of violence.
Whereas not all males affected by trauma reply in the identical means, analysis by the Brazilian NGO Promundo has discovered that males and boys are extra probably than ladies and women to exhibit maladaptive coping behaviour comparable to risk-taking, low bodily exercise, withdrawal and self-harm – or violence in its a number of kinds. There may be additionally proof that charges of alcohol and substance abuse are larger amongst males affected by trauma or excessive ranges of stress.
Psychological research recommend a hyperlink between masculine norms, emotional restriction, and PTSD signs. As such, males are much less more likely to search assist or speak in confidence to others concerning the difficulties they’re experiencing. This in flip will increase their danger of creating unfavorable coping mechanisms.
Throughout battle or in conditions of acute meals insecurity, day by day stresses by way of an lack of ability to fulfil masculine expectations can develop into notably acute – and result in more and more violent behaviour. This sample emerges in most of the interviews carried out for the XCEPT mission.
SPLA troopers in 2016: the top of the UN mission in South Sudan has warned the nation is again on the point of civil struggle.
Jason Patinkin (Voice Of America) through Wikimedia Commons
Eric, from the South Sudan state of Japanese Equatoria, misplaced his father when he was ten. His father was a reasonably rich man however after his loss of life, that wealth was handed on to Eric’s uncles on his father’s facet, reasonably than his mom or her three co-wives. (The custom of inheritance passing to male kinfolk is reflective of girls’s lack of financial independence in rural South Sudan.)
Eric was then required to respect his uncles as stepfathers as they grew to become the de facto authority over his mom, her co-wives and their kids. Because the oldest son, he endured years of beatings from his stepfathers, in addition to witnessing violence by them towards his mom.
Upon reaching maturity, Eric stated he realised he was in a position to escape the “catastrophic mistreatment from his stepfathers” and wanted to “adventure” for his personal survival. Nonetheless, resulting from meals shortages, survival meant participating in cattle raiding.
On his first raid, his “warrior group” secured a herd of cattle by killing the cattle proprietor. Eric was granted 4 cows – however aside from one, these needed to be handed over to his stepfathers. As he defined:
On my arrival, folks in my village had been excited to see me again with none accidents and I introduced these cows. On [the] spot, my stepfathers took them. As in [the] tradition of Toposa, something out of your enemies belongs to elder folks. I used to be solely left with one cow.
On his second raid, Eric secured 30 goats, of which his stepfathers allowed him to maintain ten.
Conscious of the struggling that this raiding had induced and now with a longtime status as a “warrior”, Eric then stepped again from raiding and used the ten goats to breed extra. This gave him the assets for marriage and to start out a household – however he carried the legacy of his involvement within the killings throughout previous raids, and the data that he was now a goal for retaliatory violence. He defined:
Up to now, I’ve killed six enemies; therefore am additionally included as a warrior in my group. I don’t want them [the enemy] to know my title as a result of they’ll kill me in the event that they know me.
For Eric and plenty of different males like him in South Sudan, it’s troublesome to indicate feelings comparable to disappointment or concern, as this might be interpreted as an indication of weak spot. Our researcher and interviewer, Anna Adiyo Sebit, describes the expectations positioned on males in her tradition: “As a man, even when someone dies, you do not shed a tear, especially in front of women. Instead, you cry from your heart inside.”
The trauma of struggle
Ten years in the past, whereas conducting fieldwork in Nepal for my PhD and e-book, I interviewed greater than 60 former members of the Individuals’s Liberation Military (PLA) to look at how their participation within the civil struggle – generally known as the Individuals’s Battle – affected notions of masculinity throughout the armed group.
Whereas I by no means requested about trauma or psychological difficulties, it grew to become clear these had been current for most of the males – simply by no means explicitly spoken about. As an alternative, they’d discuss their sense of disillusionment or lack of potential to fulfil societal expectations of masculinity – all of the whereas, rigorously retaining their feelings in verify.
These feelings would solely floor in additional informal conversations over tea or meals, following the formal interviews. In these moments, the boys revealed a extra weak facet – usually expressing disappointment, frustration, and a want to share their extra private tales.
It was a transparent shift from the shows of hardened masculinity of their narratives of the battlefield. A few of these casual exchanges hinted at indicators of PTSD – for instance, of their descriptions of flashbacks, sleep difficulties and quick temperedness. One younger man who was extraordinarily well mannered and courteous grew to become very fidgety after the top of the interview. He instructed me: “In the night I can’t sleep, because I hear bomb blasts inside my head.”
One other, clearly happy with his position within the Individuals’s Battle, recounted his bravery on the battlefield. But, when he spoke of the six months of torture he had endured in police custody, his composure faltered and he struggled to carry again tears. He confirmed me a photograph of his three-year-old baby, saying: “This is why I will never return to battle.”
Members of the Individuals’s Liberation Military in Nepal, 2008.
Jonathan Alpeyrie through Wikimedia Commons
What I encountered was males who appeared uneasy about expressing feelings as this runs opposite to masculine expectations, however had been additionally pissed off at an absence of shops to inform their story.
Throughout one interview with a former PLA member within the western district of Bardiya, I seen a bunch of ex-PLA fighters gathered on the boundary of his residence after that they had heard an interview was going down. As my interpreter and I had been leaving, a skinny man on the entrance of the group started shouting aggressively at us.
Having initially assumed his anger was directed at my presence within the space, I realised it stemmed from his frustration at not being chosen for an interview. “Why does everyone always want to interview you?” he shouted on the man I had simply spoken to. The previous fighter’s anger, fuelled by alcohol, appeared to replicate his frustration at missing a platform to share his personal story.
From Nepal in 2016 to South Sudan in 2024, amid the violence and trauma of struggle and the day by day expectations of masculinity related to being a supplier and protector, there seemed to be few shops by way of which these males may discuss freely about their feelings, inform their tales, and admit their psychological well being difficulties.
Lots of the males interviewed in South Sudan had been concerned in violent clashes involving killings in some unspecified time in the future of their lives. In interviews carried out in Kapoeta North, a county in japanese Equatoria, some males reported having fixed flashbacks to the sounds of gunshots – once they tried to sleep at evening, these sounds would “become real”, stopping them getting any correct relaxation:
Generally you may get up in the midst of the evening and end up trembling as if these individuals are coming for you.
One man defined how he would stand up within the evening to observe a “black shadow” like a ghost. When group members would run after him to cease him, he would develop into “hostile and behave like he wants to kill everyone” – as a result of, he defined, he noticed his good friend being killed on the battlefield and the reminiscence of this could not go away him, particularly within the evening.
A girl described how, when younger males are concerned in “killing”, their “mind is not functioning well”. Contextualising this declare she defined: “There was this man who got traumatised due to the ongoing conflict of raiding. He fought many battles until the gunshot sound affected his brain and made him crazy.”
She then described a person who couldn’t settle for his good friend had died in a cattle camp raid and insisted on returning to the battlefield, regardless that the group instructed him to not. “After confirming [his friend’s death] he ran mad and became confused. We say that such a person had his heart broken by the incident he witnessed, and we say he is mad.”
Males whose companions have been killed can develop into fixated on revenge, as Sebit explains, “It will torture their mind until they go and avenge the death of the person that was killed.” Some will encourage them to take revenge however others, like Lokwi, try to discourage revenge killings and dealing in direction of peaceable decision of disputes by way of dialogue.
Societal expectations of masculinity
The hyperlink between societal expectations of masculinity, trauma and violent behaviour amongst males is vital in higher understanding ongoing insecurities in rural South Sudan. A person is meant to personal cows with a view to achieve respect from their group. With out these, they are often rejected – resulting in emotions of isolation, despair and a concern of ridicule.
As famous by one other aged interviewee: “If a man does not go for raiding, he will be cursed by elders. [In contrast], if he comes back with cows, people will celebrate – and if he dies, people will say he died as a warrior.”
It may be a vicious circle. If you don’t get cows whenever you raid one other group, this may increasingly result in additional emotions of disgrace – driving the younger males to place themselves at additional danger. In a state of stress and having grown up in a tradition of battle, they could regard themselves as having no alternative however to danger loss of life within the quest for cows. Those that have been orphaned or wouldn’t have different members of the family to help them could be notably weak to this.
A younger boy brandishes an immitation pistol manufactured from mud in South Sudan’s capital, Juba.
Richard Juilliart/Shutterstock
Such issues about masculinity emerge in most of the interviews with younger males in South Sudan – and in addition in discussions with help staff there. Catholic Reduction Companies (CRS) is likely one of the few organisations in South Sudan who’ve run trauma consciousness coaching for males. An area CRS programme supervisor, Luol, defined to me in a web based assembly how males’s worries about marriage rights can spiral into acts of violence:
What is definitely occurring in [young men’s] brains is they’re pondering: ‘Okay, I am 18 or 17 years old now, in the next two years I have to have my partner at home, but I don’t have assets. [So] one of the best ways to get assets is to raid or steal folks’s properties.’ That is the pondering of struggle. That is the pondering of an individual who has been uncovered to battle – that one of the best ways to get assets is to raid from any individual.
In one other assembly, Luol described his expertise of facilitating trauma consciousness programmes with males. He defined that “many of the men have participated in cattle raiding and have seen horrific kinds of events such as, seeing somebody [being] killed, and [they] can be traumatised because [they] participated in that war [raid].”
Luol described one younger man who got here and spoke to him after the primary day of coaching:
He wished to testify that he’s now recovering from his trauma as a result of he participated within the struggle and he noticed kids and girls being killed and when he returned residence, he noticed [in] his personal kids, the kids who had been killed, and he cried, he felt ashamed for taking part and taking part in a component on this. And he was making an attempt to recuperate from that impact of trauma. And that’s quite common. Many of the younger males who take part in struggle come again traumatised.
The significance of such shops for males to return and discuss collectively about their feelings was emphasised in our assembly. For cultural causes, neither particular person counselling periods nor periods together with ladies can be acceptable to the boys.As famous by one other native CRS workers member :
If ladies are in that group, the boys are probably to not discuss [trauma] due to masculinity points. They don’t need the ladies to listen to males accepting weak spot or vulnerability … But when the boys are speaking alone [about] their life they’ll say: ‘Yes, this is what happened to me, and this is how we can move forward.’
Whereas these periods usually are not presupposed to be a type of restorative justice or “amnesty” for crimes dedicated, Luol defined that opening up about emotions of guilt within the small group is useful in addressing “displaced anger” that may manifest in continued violence in the neighborhood, clan or within the household.
CRS Trauma Consciousness and Social Cohesion programmes additionally encourage discussions of alternate options to violence or cattle raiding, presenting a longer-term life imaginative and prescient for these current. In response to one attendee, his much less traumatised mind permits for rational pondering comparable to: “If I start cultivating this year and I want to marry in two or three years’ time, I’ll be able to produce the crops, sell them in the market, and then buy cows if I need to buy cows.”
The programme was piloted in South Sudan’s Larger Jonglei State in 2014 utilizing CRS personal funding. Three years later it secured funding from USAID after “demonstrating its value”. In 2020, with further funding from the EU, the programme was expanded to areas of Japanese Equatoria. Whereas the programme has now ended with the completion of its funding cycle, CRS continues to hunt future funding to re-establish the initiative.
Troopers have fun the anniversary of South Sudan’s independence day, which briefly introduced peace.
Richard Juilliart/Shutterstock
‘Everything gets destroyed’
Whereas recognising that almost all males don’t have interaction in violence, the truth is males are overwhelmingly accountable for violence when it does happen. That is the case in South Sudan as in all international locations. It’s due to this fact very important to interact with males, not simply as perpetrators of violence however as potential peacemakers.
Sadly, gender stereotyping throughout the humanitarian and donor sector has resulted in an absence of trauma response focused at males. As an alternative, males and boys are typically framed as perpetual perpetrators of violence and discrimination – as “emasculated troublemakers” not value participating with, or at finest by the “men can cope by themselves” narrative.
Wider analysis by XCEPT has discovered that out of 12 humanitarian organisations interviewed in northern Syria, northern Iraq and South Sudan, solely two had programmes particularly focused at males. The state of affairs seems little modified from the conclusion reached within the 2021 Promondo report, which said:
This de-prioritisation of boys and males in emergency response is rooted in donors’ and worldwide organisations’ lack of political will to meaningfully acknowledge that vulnerability exists past ladies and women … Persistent inattention to boys and males has resulted in applications, companies and areas not being sufficiently tailor-made to satisfy their wants.
This not solely has an impression on males and boys’ wellbeing. It additionally fails to tackle board the truth that unaddressed trauma amongst males correlates with will increase in group violence, revenge killings, cattle raiding and gender-based violence suffered by ladies and women. As a world CRS workers member defined:
Except donors have a means of dealing with [the reality of trauma] and addressing it in all interventions, all the cash we’re spending on well being applications and infrastructure applications and teaching programs and no matter it’s, it’s simply cash down the drain. As a result of finally, all the things will get destroyed in violence.
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