Amalna South Sudan is contributing towards peacebuilding and conducive election environment in South Sudan by preparing a conducive ground before, during and after elections through engagement of cattle camp youth, social media followers, youth, women and people with disabilities by encouraging participants to resolve conflicts in their communities in non-violent ways, create awareness on their constitutional role to participate in elections and decision-making process.

Since its independence in 2011, South Sudan has never seen national elections. The current political configuration relies on quota negotiated in the revitalized peace agreement. Facing severe challenges and delays, the already extended transitional period provided by the agreement got extended to February 2024 by a roadmap agreed between all peace agreement signatories, with election scheduled for December 2024. The slow progress in implementing the R-ARCSS has continued to witness rising violence reflected through national, sub-national and community conflicts in some part of the country, have disproportional impacts on youth, especially young women. In South Sudan the cattle camp youth and people with disabilities were the most isolated groups of people when it comes to their participation in humanitarian activities and decision-making process, however, this project throughout engaged them not only as participants but to lead a process with the role of Amalna to supervise them.

“Promotion of Peace and Social Cohesion to Mitigate Electoral Violence in South Sudan (PSCMEV)” project was implemented by Amalna South Sudan with support from Christian Aid Central Equatoria, Jonglei and Eastern Equatoria states respectively. It aims to reduce incidences of electoral violence, hate speech, ethnic contempt in social media and public space before, during and after the anticipated electoral period in South Sudan. The intervention seeks to ensure that the electoral process in South Sudan is conducted in the most credible manner and mitigate electoral violence as well address exclusion and marginalization of young people such as youths, women, PWDs and elderly person from decision making and their political participation process in South Sudan.

PSCMEV project was implemented in Juba Central Equatoria, Torit Eastern Equatoria and Bor Jonglei States covering Juba County, Torit County, and Bor South County Targeting Youths, women, and people with disabilities (PWD). Amalna South Sudan used different strategies for advocacy and awareness creation. These strategies include use of unique social media campaign known as Youth and Women Media Platform for Peace (YWMPP), radio talk shows, National Youth conference, coaching and mentorship of cattle camp youth, training of cattle camp leaders, production and broadcast of short videos and audios and webinar trainings.

We created a significant impact to the lives of poor and marginalized people. The youth, women, and people with disabilities (PWD) were throughout engaged, this had provided a unique platform both on social media and in the communities to receive information about elections, voting, hate speech, and their role in promoting peace in their communities before, during and after the elections. By the end of May 2024, we were able to train, educate, coach, and engage 31,271 people through our unique Youth-led peace message campaigns, media and outreach approaches.