Casualty recording in South Sudan
Efforts to document casualties in South Sudan – both before and after independence – have been sporadic and limited. There is no effective state-led casualty recording initiative. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) systematically documents civilian casualties but it does not share information publicly. Civil society-led casualty recording initiatives are the main source of casualty information for South Sudan.
Obstacles
Approximately 80 per cent of the South Sudan population is rural which, together with the ongoing armed violence, creates significant logistical obstacles for documenting casualties. Reporting from remote areas can be incomplete and hard to verify. The involvement of multiple formal and informal armed groups creates difficulties in identifying and categorising perpetrators. It also creates potential inconsistencies in categorisation of victims as civilians or combatants.
Civil registration systems are weak, and only 27 per cent of the adult population is literate (source: South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics). Limited telecommunication and internet infrastructure creates further obstacles to comprehensive documentation.
State-led efforts
The South Sudan National Human Rights Commission (SSNHRC) was established in 2009, before independence. Among its activities it monitors and investigates human rights violations, including those related to armed violence and conflict. Its impact is compromised by inadequate funding and questions regarding political independence.
The SSNHRC does not compile consistent or comprehensive casualty records.
Civil society casualty recording
Various local and national civil society casualty recording initiatives exist for South Sudan, including those within the Casualty Recorders Network. Staff and volunteers documenting casualties in South Sudan face serious security risks including direct threats due to their work. As a result, some organisations have had to move their offices and staff to neighbouring countries, including Uganda.
Civil society casualty recorders in South Sudan typically have limited funds and this restricts their operations. The sudden withdrawal of USAID funding in January 2025 had a devastating impact on many human rights monitors, including casualty recorders, in South Sudan.
Ongoing armed conflict across South Sudan creates access difficulties for those trying to investigate and verify casualties directly. By operating through networks of local contacts, civil society groups can navigate these restrictions and obtain firsthand information on casualty incidents. However, this can put local informants at high personal risk.
United Nations casualty recording activities
The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) was established in 2011 by a UN Security Council resolution, and is still active. Its primary mandate was to support the peaceful establishment of the new state of South Sudan.
Following the outbreak of civil war in 2013, the Human Rights Division within UNMISS began systematically documenting civilian casualties. It conducts field investigations and interviews with witnesses and survivors to verify details of specific incidents, and publishes regular statistical reports on civilian casualties. Local civil society organisations are important sources of information for this work.
The comprehensiveness of UNMISS’s documentation has been limited by logistical and security-related challenges in accessing many parts of the country, as well as budgetary restrictions limiting the availablity of qualified personnel.
Although UNMISS documents casualties in detail it does not publish identifying information about victims. Its statistical data on fatalities has been used to identify trends in violence and encourage timely international political and humanitarian responses. UNMISS has also used information on casualty incidents to advocate with armed actors within South Sudan, in order to better protect civilians.
In 2016, the UN Human Rights Council established the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, to investigate and report on gross human rights violations, including killings. The Commission’s mandate has been renewed every year subsequently.
Although it routinely reports on trends and incidents of fatal violence, the Commission does not record or directly investigate casualties individually. Instead, it focuses on investigating and reporting on emblematic cases of particular significance. The Commission receives casualty information primarily from UNMISS and OHCHR.
Information on individual casualties
Sources of information about people killed in the armed conflict in South Sudan:
Remembering The Ones We Lost is a Sudan-based organisation. Since 2014 it has been recording the names of those killed in conflict-related violence starting from the Torit Revolution of August 1955. This information is held in an online public memorial, which now includes almost 25,000 named victims.
GLOSIPAD is a South Sudanese civil society organisation established in January 2016 to support peacebuilding and community-based reconcilation. It maintains a database documenting casualties of armed conflict in South Sudan since 2013.
United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)
UNMISS has reported publicly but sporadically on civilian casualties since its mandate began. Since 2020, UNMISS has consistently published quarterly and annual casualty tracking reports. These reports are statistical, with demographic breakdowns by age and sex, but do not provide information on individuals.
