Improving the Ethiopia-South Sudan Borderland Peoples’ Interaction: Possibilities for Utilizing the “Soft Border” Approach

Pibor Village. Photo courtesy of Judy McCallum via Flickr Commons. 

Many different ethnic groups inhabit the Ethiopia-South Sudan border region, including the Anyuaa, Nuer, Kommo, Oppo, and Murle, belonging to the Nilotic and para-Nilotic groups of people. Besides these, other ethnic groups from different parts of Ethiopia and South Sudan also live along the border. The three largest ethnic groups in the borderland region — the Nuer, Anyuaa, and Murle — are ethnically polarized. These groups have built systemic ethnic cleavages and ethnic boundaries that define their interactions with each other, including conflict over the already limited resources in the region. Ethnicity is a salient identity used to establish boundaries between certain ethnic groups, and it creates the basis for some of their conflict.

The people that live along the international border have an opportunity to establish a "Soft Border." The concept of a "Soft Border," or one regulated but not physically separated, is promoted by the African Union Border Program (AUBP) to promote smooth interactions among international borderland people based on: a) cooperation and coordination, b) capacity building, and c) community involvement. In this regard, Soft Border has the potential to encourage trust building and smoother interactions between the borderland communities by regulating and legalizing their socio-economic interactions. The AUBP Soft Border Mission changes the dynamics of the borderland peoples' interactions, and reduces hostilities relations by facilitating their contact in a responsible and accountable manner. Therefore, the Soft Border approach is a good approach to mitigating conflict and improving relationships at the international border of Ethiopia and South Sudan.

However, along this international border, ethnic identity is constructed in different ways by various groups, and some groups increase their population size through increased births and/or by abducting children from other groups. For instance, the Nuer utilizes adoption while the Murle utilizes abduction to bring children from other ethnic groups to assimilate into their culture, for the purpose of increasing their population size.

The Nuer have a practice of marrying women from other ethnic groups in order to increase the population and monopolize resources. They say that someone becomes Nuer once they make a Gar (a cultural marker for the Nuer consisting of long forehead cuts that form scars) on their forehead, even if they were born outside of the Nuer ethnic group. The Murle abduct children from their neighbors for two purposes: to strengthen and enlarge their tribe, and to gain wealth by exchanging children with cattle. A girl child can be exchanged for 50 cattle, while a boy is worth 100 cattle. The Anyuaa people, on the other hand, are more rigid and conservative in their culture and prefer to preserve their identity by not intermixing with other groups; their identity is acquired only through birth within their own group. Such ethnic constructions of the Murle and Nuer reflect the constructivist theory that ethnicity is the product of social processes rather than a cultural given. Culture then is made and remade rather than ascribed by birth. The construction of the Anyuaa people's ethnic identity is more characteristic of the primordialist theory, whereby ethnic membership is acquired by birth only.

The economic activities of these three major ethnic groups reflect their intrinsic cultural assumptions. The Anyuaa depend on traditional agriculture, and they control the right and left banks of the rivers and arid land for shifting cultivation. Culturally, they have a close attachment with land and want to preserve their ancestral territory from other ethnic groups. The Murle and Nuer people are pastoralist and depend on livestock. Their settlement is seasonal, moving from place to place to find pastureland and water for their cattle. Their movement is affected by confrontation with the Anyuaa and between them, through competition over livestock.

The cultural outlook of the Murle regarding cattle differs from that of the Nuer. The Murle believe that they own all the cattle in the world, and they have a strong predilection to gather cattle from other places. The practice of raiding cattle is normal to them and they believe that they are justified in collecting "lost" cattle. However, the Nuer people also have a close attachment with cattle, associate their identity with cattle, accumulate wealth from cattle, and require vast pastureland and plenty of water for their cattle. They are, however, conscious that other groups derive their livelihoods from cattle, and typically only raid cattle from the Murle people as a means of revenge in times of intergroup conflict.

These borderland people suffer from cross-border crime. Some of the underlying causes of borderland problems are cross-border criminal activities ranging from cattle rustling, child abduction, automobile theft, smuggling of weapons, and illicit trade. This criminal cross-border interaction makes peaceful interactions difficult. However, it is possible to turn borders from barriers into bridges, by allowing borderland people to easily and conveniently cross them, engage in productive cross-border trading activities, and carry out their socio-cultural responsibilities.

Peaceful borders are important for enhancing borderland pastoralists' interactions in search of fertile grasslands and water by facilitating, and easing socio-cultural and ethnic relations. In other words, Soft Border can provide room for borderland communities to have socio-cultural and economic contact, by discussing their common issues, engaging in conflict resolution, and building trust among the people in an environment supported by government structures. This encourages mutual border administration and flourishing legal trade and movement. With this understanding, hard borders such as a wall, fence, or North-South Korea type division are not feasible along the Ethiopia-South Sudan border. The concept of Soft Border focuses on pacifying the interactions of borderland people through cooperation, coordination, community involvement, and people-to-people relations. In this regard, Ethiopia and South Sudan have the possibility to develop effective and sustainable border management via a Soft Border, which would help them to minimize ethnic polarization and enhance stability and peace by easing the interactions between the ethnic groups living in the border region.

Tasew Gashaw is working towards his PhD dissertation at Addis Ababa University in Peace and Security. He was a formerSouthern Voices Network for Peacebuilding Scholar in Fall 2017.