China has sent 700 Chinese peacekeepers for the UN Mission in South Sudan

The tale of South Sudan in 2014 read like a tragedy: civil war broke out in December 2013, more than 10,000 were killed, and at least 120,000 people became homeless. The economy took its cue from these tragic events and nosedived.

A conflict resulting from a misunderstanding within the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement led to a countrywide war, pitting soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir's government against rebels supporting his former Vice President Riek Machar.

Such was the situation that one of the mediators picked to help bring peace in the country admitted the number of those killed may have been understated.

"The war is so cruel that nobody has even indicated whether they hold prisoners of war. Millions are displaced inside South Sudan and to neighboring countries. Millions more are struggling to survive. And the war continues to claim the lives of combatants and innocent civilians," Ethiopian envoy Seyoum Mesfin told the South Sudanese in a broadcast in December 2014.

Mesfin, Ethiopia's former Foreign Affairs Minister, is the mediator appointed alongside Kenya's Lazarus Sumbeiywo and Sudan's Mohammed Ahmed Moustafa El Dabi to help bring peace in South Sudan under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

Taking responsibility

After a year of fighting, mediators, the region and the international community now seem to say South Sudan's problems are everybody else's.

"I can assure you of the region's commitment to help the South Sudanese find a peace that is more than the absence of war," Mesfin added in his message. He was referring to the IGAD's member states Eritrea, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Djibouti, Sudan, Somalia and South Sudan itself.

In December last year, things started to look up. A group of humanitarian players gathered in Nairobi to help raise funds for those affected by the war, the discussion went beyond relief.

"We are doing all that we can, politically. We have made progress on all the issues except [those] that relate to security and the governance structure," Amina Mohamed, Kenya's Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary, told reporters in Nairobi. She was responding to a question on what South Sudan's neighbors had done to bring peace.

"A lot of progress has actually been made. I think we are seeing much less activity in the battlefield that we have seen before," Mohamed remarked.

The IGAD had promised tough sanctions if hostilities did not end. But in December, Mohamed announced there wouldn't be any "because the parties have made a lot of progress toward a peaceful solution."

Global support

International support for South Sudan is not limited to the region alone. In December Chinese President Xi Jinping authorized the dispatch of 700 Chinese peacekeepers to join the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua. It is the first time China has contributed an infantry battalion to the UN peacekeeping mission. The troops will be responsible for protecting civilians against violence.

Xinhua reported that the first batch of 180 peacekeepers flew to South Sudan in January 2015, with the rest to arrive in March.

Commander Wang Zhen said the battalion will be equipped with drones, armored infantry carriers, anti-tank missiles, mortars, light self-defense weapons, bulletproof uniforms and helmets, "completely for self-defense purposes."

As the largest contributor of peacekeepers among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China had deployed more than 27,000 military personnel around the globe as of September 2014, according to the Ministry of National Defense. The UN said its peacekeeping force has already reached 10,488 in South Sudan. The Chinese peacekeepers will also be involved in some engineering and medical work among refugees.

Peace efforts

South Sudan's partners and aid agencies have been burning the midnight oil to assist those affected and bring lasting peace to capital city Juba.

In December, Mohamed presided over the South Sudan Regional Refugee Response Plan for 2015, an appeal by 39 aid agencies seeking to raise $810 million to help refugees. According to Ann Encontre, Regional Coordinator and Deputy Director of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of South Sudanese refugees in the region could rise from the current 478,109 to 821,000 if fighting continues in 2015.

China, the European Union and the United States have been working behind the scenes to ensure a lasting peace deal is reached. The IGAD, supported by these partners, said it has managed to reach an agreement on a leadership structure where both parties will have an interim government before fresh elections in 2016. These efforts may look slow, but economists, political analysts and leaders say they will go a long way to prevent a catastrophe.

"This conflict took a while [to resolve] because those involved might have thought the alternative, which is war, was easier," Dr. Wilson Ochieng, a professor of conflict management at the University of Nairobi, told ChinAfrica. "It is a good thing they learnt talking is better. Conflicts often take some time for parties to realize they need to talk rather than fight. With the support they are getting, [the time] is now ripe to reach a solution that will prevent further loss."

Oil dependency

South Sudan is the world's youngest nation, having seceded from Sudan in 2011. It is also the most oil-dependent country in the world, according to the World Bank. Oil accounts for almost every export it makes, and for almost 80 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). The bank observed that the conflict had interfered with South Sudan's program of providing basic services. It estimated in an economic review that the conflict would cost up to 15 percent of the 2014 GDP.

In November 2014, the World Bank said oil production had dropped by 20 percent because the conflict made it difficult for oil producers to continue as usual. This meant there was a negative impact on revenues to finance the country's $4-billion annual budget for 2014. Economists estimated in December that if the war continued, there would be another danger of farmers being unable to harvest their crops.

"South Sudan's problem is no longer just about how the war will affect oil. If crops in the field are left to rot on farms because farmers cannot pick them, it means the country's non-oil GDP will be very much in jeopardy," Bernard Ayieko, a social economist in Nairobi, told ChinAfrica.

Of South Sudan's estimated 11 million people, the World Bank said 85 percent of the working population was engaged in "non-wage work," which is essentially agriculture. Given that 83 percent of civilians lived in rural areas before the violence, it means a significant population was living on the edge during the fighting.

 "A lot of people are locked away. This is partly because the agencies cannot reach them for security reasons. It could also be because the agencies don't know where these people are," Gatwech Kulang, a South Sudanese humanitarian coordinator for local relief agencies, told ChinAfrica. "Once the South Sudanese realize they can help their own compatriots, the world can assist those in need."

(Reporting from Kenya)