UN Sanctions as Leverage in Mediation Processes? An Anatomy of Missed Opportunities in South Sudan

This article analyzes the role of UN sanctions in the context of peace negotiations in South Sudan from the outbreak of the civil war in December 2013 until the signing of the peace agreement in August 2015. Drawing on the literature regarding third-party intervention in civil wars, it explores whether the UN sanctions regime--established in March 2015--was conceived as an instrument of leverage to get the parties to agree to a settlement. The article asks two questions: Have sanctions and mediation been coordinated? Has the interlink between sanctions and mediation been successful? First, there has been little coordination between sanctions and mediation. Second, UN sanctions did not appear to play a crucial role in the mediation process. This analysis is based on desk research and nineteen interviews with officials from the UN, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and other regional actors conducted between 2017 and 2018. Keywords sanctions - mediation - South Sudan - conflict - crisis management - United Nations - Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)
1 Introduction International conflicts and crises are often mitigated, and sometimes resolved, through mediation processes. Indeed, sanctions can be adopted to change the cost-benefit analyses of parties/actors, thus supporting mediation [...]