A Gendered Perspective on Peacebuilding: South Sudanese Women’s Agency in the Post-Revitalised Agreement Era

This perspective piece critically examines the agency of South Sudanese women in formal and informal peacebuilding processes during the implementation of the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) from 2021 onwards. It argues that a persistent patriarchal political culture continues to marginalise women’s substantive participation in high-level decision-making, despite constitutional quotas and rhetorical commitments to the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. Employing a qualitative, desk-based methodology, the analysis synthesises recent evidence from United Nations, African Union, and South Sudanese civil society reports (2021-2026) through a feminist political theory lens. The study contends that women’s most impactful agency is frequently exercised through grassroots, community-based initiatives—such as local reconciliation dialogues and cross-ethnic women’s coalitions—which address the everyday manifestations of conflict. These efforts remain systematically undervalued within national peace architectures. The analysis re-centres African feminist praxis, underscoring the critical disconnect between internationally endorsed frameworks and the lived realities of local women peacebuilders. It concludes that sustainable peace necessitates a fundamental restructuring of peacebuilding paradigms to recognise and institutionally integrate these indigenous, gendered forms of leadership and social cohesion, moving beyond tokenistic representation towards transformative inclusion.