(Un)- intended contributions to peace or conflict? An analytical framework for examining the relationship between humanitarian access negotiations and conflict resolution in intra-state conflicts

Following a six year process, South Sudan became “the youngest country in the world” (United Nations 2022) in July 2011, following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with the Republic of Sudan in 2005. However, the new country`s government was not able to bring about peace and the population of South Sudan continues to be affected by violent clashes between the different armed groups aligned to and financed by either the central government of President Salva Kiir or the different opposition groups. The ongoing conflict has been marked by extreme political violence and human rights violations and at the same time, the country continuous to be affected by droughts and floods (UNOCHA 2022). Consequently, humanitarian needs have been and continue to be high and many humanitarian organizations, ranging from UN to international and national NGOs deliver essential goods and services to affected communities. However, humanitarian access, defined as the ability of humanitarian organizations to reach people in need, has been highly contested in the context of the conflict. Therefore, representatives of both the respective humanitarian organizations and the different armed factions controlling specific areas across the country are in constant negotiation over the conditions to access people in need. Already during Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) in 1986 humanitarian access was contested by government and rebel forces who “will attempt to shape where aid goes, and […] this shaping will partly determine the course of the conflict” (Craze 2018, 2). Consequently, aid became one amongst many weapons of war and was used for instance “to depopulate rural areas in favor of government garrison towns” (ibid.) Restricting access somewhere and granting access elsewhere is therefore used to influence the flow of humanitarian aid as well as the populations that depend on it. Analyzing the role of humanitarian access negotiations in Syria Kool, Pospisil, and van Voorst (2021) conclude that “[u]nderstanding how access is obtained […] makes the operation political. It influences the conflict, shifts alliances and power structures […] that impact overall conflict dynamics.” (Kool, Pospisil, and van Voorst 2021, 1502) Following this line of reasoning, I argue that negotiations processes for humanitarian access to specific communities may have the potential to impact place-specific conflict dynamics. More specifically I argue that depending on how such negotiations are set up and who gets to negotiate, they may either support or undermine local conflict resolution processes, i.e., by providing actors with legitimacy, creating/destroying trust or overcoming/creating barriers to inter-communal cooperation and exchange. In this paper, I present an analytical framework for examining the relationship between humanitarian access negotiations and sub-national conflict resolution, which is part of a four-year PhD project focusing on South Sudan as a case study. Getting a better insight into the circumstances under which this relationship may be positive, neutral, or negative may not only contribute to an increased scholarly understanding of the role of humanitarian actors in intrastate conflicts but hopefully also provide these actors with best practices for a conflict sensitive approach to their negotiation efforts.