Local support systems in South Sudan

The Mercy Corps report “The currency of connections: why local support systems are integral to helping people recover in South Sudan” (2019, 41 pp) by Alex Humphrey et al provides insights into local social protection and support systems and how humanitarian aid can complement or disrupt these systems. In protracted crises in which formal governance structures are weak or non-existent, people depend heavily on local social and economic systems to cope, often more than they depend on external aid. Households may rely on their friends, neighbours and extended families for food, access to economic opportunities, and negotiation of safe passage when fleeing from conflict. In addition to social support networks, markets also play a critical role in enabling crisis-affected populations to cope with and recover from conflict, displacement and disasters.

The report describes variations in households’ social connectedness and their related abilities to benefit from local support systems. It also considers the different obligations that households and economic actors have to support others in their communities and whether such support is reciprocal. Findings are based on 67 qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted in October 2018 in Panyijar County (southern Unity State) with a diverse sample of households, economic actors and key informants.

One of the livelihood-based groupings studied are Nuer cattle-keepers, whereby 4–5 herders tend 1200–1500 head of cattle belonging to several households in the community. The report describes how crises affect traditional institutions of the communities to negotiate access to land and to deal with conflicts. It found that, relative to other livelihood-based groups (e.g. fishers and traders), the cattle-keepers’ system of social organisation and collective action – sharing of food and redistribution of cattle when a member’s herd is depleted – sheltered them from crisis-related marketplace volatility. The authors warn that cash programming interventions may be indirectly changing and, at worst, undermining the wider community’s ability to positively interact with marketplaces during crisis, especially in traditionally non-monetary contexts such as among Nuer pastoralists.

Posted on 14 February 2019 in Pastoralism & Peacebuilding, Pastoralist Livelihoods & Nutrition