South Sudanese religious actors have legitimacy and play important peacebuilding roles, but have limited influence.
Nonetheless, Christians are divided into small churches established along ethnic lines, and there is ethnic-line voting in the election of bishops (USIP, 2019). To a certain extent, religious affiliation correlates to ethnic identification and geographical roots. This is compounded by internal power plays, divisive personalities and competition for adherents.

This learning brief highlights the main outcomes in South Sudan from the project ‘Communities Richer in Diversity’, whose aim was to promote cultural diversity and respect for equal dignity of all people through interfaith and intercultural dialogue and cooperation. In South Sudan, the Pan-African Christian Women Alliance (PACWA) and the Evangelical Alliance of South Sudan (EASS) carried out the project from December 2018 to February 2020 in Juba, Bor, and Yei. PACWA is an EASS commission which was formed to support women to cope with the effects of the civil war and the challenges of displacement. This learning brief is based on face-to-face and telephone key informant interviews and focus group discussions.

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