Republic of South Sudan
Fragility Assessment
Early indication of results and lessons learnt
Co-ordination Structure
• A Joint task force was established to undertake preparations
for the High-level Partnership Forum, a large aid coordination
event planned for the end of the year.
• The mandate of this group included overseeing New Deal
implementation process, including the fragility assessment
and development of the Compact.
• The Joint Task Force is composed of Undersecretaries from 10
Government Agencies and 10 heads of donor agencies.
• It is Chaired by Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning
Process and Methodology
Step 1: New deal Launch Workshop
• The implementation of the new deal started with a one day launch hosted by
MOFEP.
• This exercise introduced stakeholders to the New Deal and began to map
exiting policies and gaps for supporting the PSGs.
Step 2: Background research, information gathering and consultations
• Different information gathering approaches were employed to generate buy-in
from the respective groups. This was mainly document review of available
reports and analysis carried out by the government and other stakeholder
groups and key informant interviews.
Step 3: Fragility assessment workshop
• The Fragility assessment workshop was a two-day event in Juba for 100
participants from central and State level. The workshop included a general
discussion on the drivers of conflict a discussion about each of the PSGs in
break-out groups.
• The fragility spectrum dimensions and sub-dimensions and the analytical
framework were used to structure debate.
• At the end of the workshop, the participants evaluated the proceeding through
a questionnaire.
Process and Methodology
Step 5: Identification of indicators
• The break-out groups were asked to propose indicators to measure progress
against each of the PSGs.
Step 6: Assessment, indicator development and reporting
• The draft fragility assessment report was presented for review to MOFEP and
the donor community.
• It is being completed by desk research and a series of key informant interviews
before the validation workshop.
• The indicators list was presented to the National Bureau of Statistics for review,
amendments and additional inputs.
Step 7: Validation workshop (To be undertaken in October 2012)
Key Outputs
• A draft mapping exercise to determine what existing policies
support the New Deal and identify the main gaps
• A draft fragility assessment report that summarize the main
findings from the review and consultations (under draft)
• A list of indicators for the identified key dimensions to assess
progress (under draft)
• A short lessons learned report outlining the process,
stakeholders consulted, feedback on the strengths and
weaknesses of the approach and suggestions how it could be
improved.
Key Findings
The drivers of conflict and fragility
• The fragility assessment indicates that some of the same roots causes that
prompted South Sudan to seek independence from the North continue to
characterize the fragility of the country.
• The fragility spectrum indicates also that if the underlying issues of those
roots causes are not addressed the country’s stability is at risk.
The biggest areas of progress
• The draft spectrum indicates that South Sudan is in the Rebuild and Reform
stage of transformation. This is based on the mean rating from the
aggregation of the dimension scores.
• A key finding is that whilst the majority of dimensions are felt to be at the
very beginning in terms of progress at this level, “societal relationships” of
the Legitimate Politics PSG is progressing faster and is considered to be at
the mid-point of the transition stage.
• Overall PSG “Legitimate politics” is felt by the participants to be the PSG
that is showing the most progress.
• This finding is consistent with expectations of a newly formed country one
year after independence.
Key Findings
Priority areas where greater effort is needed
• Gender discrimination or gender equality and illiteracy are crosscutting
issues that will require greater efforts from the government, the judiciary,
the security sector, economic foundations and revenue and social service.
• Capacity building and institutional performances are the dimensions of the
5PSG were most challenging and that will require more investment from
the government and external partners.
• Moving out of fragility and attaining resilience will require a greater effort
to diversify the economy. Agriculture was the sector most often cited as
able to accomplish this.
Measuring progress
• The fragility spectrum workshop identified 35 indicators/indicators areas
to measure progress of moving out of fragility. The National Bureau of
Statistics identified 17 indicators and/or indicators areas with the major
sources of data available.
Next Steps
• High level Partnership Forum: The South Soudan New deal Task
force was structured around the High-level Partnership Forum (HPF)
that the Government of South Sudan and its donor partners intend
to hold late December 2012-early January 2012, in order to reaffirm
a joint commitment to the nation’s development in the context of
the New Deal on Engagement in Fragile States.
• One vision, one plan: The fragility spectrum will help to develop the
New deal, one vision, one plan of South Sudan by bringing together
three initiatives currently underway in South Sudan, namely the
delivery of the SSDP (and the related SSDI exercise), the UN
Peacebuilding Support Plan, the UN Core Functions Strategy and the
New Deal’s Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals;
• Compact and new aid architecture: The assessment will provide an
opportunity to present two complementary new frameworks for
cooperation, namely: (i) A Compact for Implementing the New Deal
and (ii) the Aid Strategy.
Successes
Participation and Ownership
• The Government was pleased with attendance of the fragility
assessment workshop, with representatives from a diverse group of
stakeholders. In particular, representation from sub-national
Government was encouraging with all 10 States represented.
• The dialogue was firmly rooted in South Sudanese experience.
• A number of different donors agreed to support the activities; this
helped to encourage broader donor engagement in the process.
Deepening understanding of fragility in South Sudan
• The two day workshop provided space for participants to think in
more depth about the different aspects of fragility, although more
time would have supported this.
• South Sudan was able to learn from many of the lessons coming out
of the Sierra Leone fragility assessment. The team successfully
minimized the amount of time spent on debating or explaining
process issues by keeping the guidance clear and concise.
Challenges
Participation Challenges
• Whilst there was a significant donor presence at the workshop, they could have
engaged in the dialogue more. To overcome this, MoFEP presented the
preliminary findings to the donors community.
• There was some concern from the donor side that civil society participation was
insufficient, although there were CSO representatives from all 10 States.
• Although participation from State-level Government was very encouraging,
Central-level representation could have been stronger.
Organisational/Funding Challenges
• Even though external donors endorsed the new deal at the international level,
no local mechanism has been established to support the New Deal process
financially.
• Holding a two-day workshop with participants from the States is logistically
challenging and put strain on limited resources and personnel.
• The workshop covered a large number of topics in a relatively short period of
time, which meant that there was insufficient time to probe the issues in depth.
• Fragility spectrum dimensions dictated the discussion topics and there wasn’t a
concerted effort to prioritize areas relevant to South Sudan.
Challenges
Conceptual / Methodological Challenges
• There was some confusion over what to consider the ‘crisis period’.
• In some regards the logic behind the spectrum is questionable when
applied to South Sudan: while South Sudan can learn from the past, as a
newly independent country it now faces a new set of internal challenges
that are quite different from those faced during the period of crisis.
• Participants would have benefitted from more guidance about how to
characterize the different stages of fragility (i.e. definition of each stage).
Challenges in producing the outputs
• Delays were faced in securing a consultant to undertake the assessment.
Challenges in using the outputs/ having impact
• Ownership for the New Deal agenda beyond Ministry of Finance remains
quite weak.
• The workshop did not provide adequate time for the bigger groups to
question the priorities identified by the break-out groups on each subdimension.
Lessons Learnt
• Allow adequate time for the fragility assessment workshop to enable
in-depth discussion on PSGs (preferably one day per PSG). This will be
dependent on funding.
• At the global (secretariat level and international level), lobbying is
needed to ensure donors (in particular the New Deal partners) realize
their commitment to New Deal by offering financing.
• Wider buying from Government (beyond MOFEP and up to the
presidential level) is important.
• Allow adequate time for the compiling of the report and various
outputs.
• The development of indicators is a technical job best undertaken in
close partnership with the national statistical body.
• A well-defined agenda and process, as well as guiding questions,
helped structure the discussion in a productive way without becoming
prescriptive.
• Validation is essential.