Garang, Kuol, and Asante, Doris (2026) Beyond participation: Rethinking women’s engagement in South Sudan’s transitional context. African Security Review. (In Press)

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Abstract

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda is reshaping women’s roles in peace and security. In South Sudan, the WPS Agenda has gained traction by raising awareness and supporting women’s participation in peace processes. However, the implementation of the Agenda and gender-mainstreaming remain superficial. To understand the representation and (missed) opportunities for South Sudanese women in peace processes, we used purposive sampling to select eight peace agreements from 1972 to 2025. Using critical discourse theory, we analysed these agreements to deconstruct language, reveal inequalities, and identify opportunities. We argue that peace agreements developed after the adoption of South Sudan’s WPS National Action Plan (NAP) in 2015 would contain greater references to and opportunities for women. Our findings reveal that despite the increased inclusion of women after the WPS NAP, peace agreements continue to reinforce patriarchal values and power imbalances. This underscores the urgent need to implement the WPS Agenda and for women’s groups and civil society actors to leverage WPS NAPs as advocacy tools for gender-mainstreaming in future peace agreements. Aligning discourses in future agreements with the WPS NAP would contribute to ensuring women’s meaningful contribution and supporting the achievement of sustainable peace.

Item ID:	90557
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2154-0128
Keywords:	South Sudan, women peace and security (WPS), peace agreements, critical discourse analysis, gender representation
Related URLs:	Publisher
Copyright Information:	© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Date Deposited:	20 May 2026 01:35
FoR Codes:	44 HUMAN SOCIETY > 4405 Gender studies > 440509 Women's studies (incl. girls' studies) @ 50% 44 HUMAN SOCIETY > 4408 Political science > 440806 Gender and politics @ 50%
SEO Codes:	23 LAW, POLITICS AND COMMUNITY SERVICES > 2302 Government and politics > 230299 Government and politics not elsewhere classified @ 50% 23 LAW, POLITICS AND COMMUNITY SERVICES > 2303 International relations > 230302 International aid and development @ 50%
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