The outbreak of the global pandemic, COVID-19, caught South Sudan in the middle of another political transition after six years of a civil war. The pandemic has had a tremendously negative impact on the political transition in the country. In more specific terms, South Sudan is a country that has lost its democratic bearings since 2013, and this is likely to worsen as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cleary, South Sudan is struggling to implement the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS), which was signed on the 12th of September 2018 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The parties are particularly experiencing difficulties in fully establishing the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity (RTGoNU), the political entity tasked with implementing the Agreement. Its slow implementation is partly blamed on COVID-19 pandemic, though this delay mainly rests with the lack of political will and intransigence of the parties. This policy brief assesses the extent to which COVID-19 has hampered the political transition in South Sudan and how the political actors are responding to the crisis in terms of their responsibilities implementing the R-ARCSS.
