Many nonviolent action movements struggle with how to engage with their opponents. Mediation can help prevent an escalation toward violence and resolve a movement’s underlying issues. Mediators can help facilitate the active participation of movements in peace processes and bridge divides between movements, governments, and other stakeholders to ultimately foster durable democratic development.
How do major social transformations happen? And how can transformation happen without violence? The examples of iconic leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak to the power of nonviolent action to achieve these transformations. Yet nonviolent action on its own is no guarantee of long-term sustainable change. Achieving this kind of change often requires not just nonviolent action, but peacebuilding processes of dialogue, negotiation, and mediation between the various constituencies within movements and their opponents.
In recent years, South Sudanese women have made significant strides in their push for inclusion in national peace processes. Women negotiators were crucial in shaping the 2018 peace agreement revitalizing what had been a stalled and contentious process and also secured a new quota that requires 35 percent of government representatives to be women, opening the door for a more expansive role in national affairs. But despite these signs of progress, women’s voices remain conspicuously absent among publicly written narratives of South Sudan, which continue to be dominated by the opinions, analysis, and stories of male writers.
“No Time to Mourn” is an anthology featuring short stories, memoirs, poems, artwork, and photography from 39 women living in South Sudan and across the diaspora. Their literary and artistic expressions provide deeply personal insights into the experiences of South Sudanese women, particularly in relation to conflict, displacement, and patriarchal gender norm