Peace processes frequently register women’s participation without granting them influence over the negotiations that determine power and resource distribution. This pattern—here conceptualised as performative inclusion—reveals a gap between formal representation and substantive political voice. Moving beyond a descriptive account, the manuscript examines Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) in protracted conflict settings, treating UNSCR 1325 as a normative framework, a site of political performance, and an arena of lived experience within broader debates on African political order, state formation, and institutional design. Focusing on South Sudan, with comparative reference to Liberia and Sierra Leone, the study explores three interrelated questions: how negotiation processes incorporate WPS language while sidelining women from decisive bargaining arenas; how increased female presence in post-conflict security institutions relates to—or fails to reshape—the gendered norms governing those institutions; and how South Sudanese women’s civil society organisations, operating under conditions of insecurity and donor dependence, navigate tensions between international agendas and locally grounded political practices. The research combines discourse analysis of WPS provisions in the CPA, ARCSS, and R-ARCSS agreements with interviews involving women negotiators, civil society leaders, and female personnel in the SSPDF and NSS. It further draws on comparative insights from Liberia and Sierra Leone and incorporates feminist ethnographic fieldwork in Juba and Wau. Its contribution lies in showing how formal inclusion can obscure deeper struggles over authority, resources, and recognition, thereby rethinking the limits of institutional reform in conflict settings (Acharya 2004; Enl