Understanding the pandemic response in South Sudan

For many countries, the second year of the pandemic is proving to be more deadly than the first. At the same time, experiences of harmful regulations during the first year continue to shape people's willingness to trust public health instructions. How these regulations have interacted with the international response to COVID-19 in South Sudan has gone largely undocumented, and the effect on the country's overall pandemic response strategy is widely misunderstood. 

FCDO-funded research, led by the LSE Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa and The Research People, included nearly a hundred qualitative interviews in South Sudan by a dominantly South Sudanese team, including members of the Bridge Network, who researched in urban and rural areas.

This event brings together expert speakers from the project to discuss how COVID-19 has been understood in South Sudan during the pandemic's first year, addressing sources of trust in the country's public health advice and how it has been undermined, including the reasons why the pandemic has often been coded in racial language. In particular, the event will ask: what has governance of the pandemic response looked like at the country-level? What role have South Sudanese NGOs played and how have their operations been affected? Crucially, how has this affected people on the ground?