This article compares two cases of securitization along South Sudan's border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. By comparing how a security concern -the presence of the Lord's Resistance Army -was interpreted and responded to, the article shows that border security practices in two borderscapes are improvised, contradictory and contested, and serve to establish authority rather than actually securing the border. This is apparent on three levels: (a) through the multiplicity of security actors vying for authority; (b) in how they interpret security concerns; and (c) in terms of what practice follows. The article argues that by allowing authority at the border to be taken by actors that are not under direct control of the central government, the South Sudanese state is developing as one that controls parts of the country in absentia, either by granting discretionary powers to low-level government authorities at the border or through tactical neglect. Processes of securitization by both state and non-state actors in the borderland are largely disconnected from the South Sudanese central government, which does not claim authority over this border and thus seemingly does not consider the lack of security for its citizens, and the parallel authorities, as a threat to central stability.

Since Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed, its border with Uganda has become a hub of activity. Contrasting developments on the Ugandan side of the border with those on the South Sudanese side, the paper draws on empirical fieldwork to argue that the CPA has created new centres of power in the margins of both states. However, in day-today dealings on either side of the border, South Sudanese military actors have become dominant. In the particular case of Arua and the South Sudan-Uganda border, past wartime authority structures determine access to opportunities in a tightly regulated, inconclusive peace. This means that small-scale Ugandan traders – although vital to South Sudan – have become more vulnerable to South Sudan's assertions of state authority. The experience of Ugandan traders calls into question the broad consensus that trade across the border is always beneficial for peace-building The paper concludes that trade is not unconditionally helpful to the establishment of a peaceful environment for everyone.

This article reflects on the experience of the two authors as 'experts' during consultations on justice and security indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals. The authors examine how the tension between the indeterminacy of the concepts to be measured -justice and security -and the concreteness of indicators shaped the politics of the consultations. Participants used this tension strategically to destabilize notions of time, space and identity on which knowledge production rests. In doing so, they blurred the distinction between academics, advocates and policy makers. They did this to lay claim to some aspects of implementation while distancing themselves from others. The authors then juxtapose this with personal experience of researching South Sudanese citizens, who challenged and deconstructed that distinction. At the same time, experts at the consultations incorporated an image of these citizens as an ethical justification for the discussion. The authors argue that a more complex sociology of knowledge is required to understand how these global knowledge practices work from the global to the local. Such a sociology of knowledge acknowledges fluidity and grapples with how knowledge practices defer and delimit moments of decision; it requires an ethico-political -rather than just a political -critique.

In early 2017, the government of South Sudan declared that parts of the country had been hit by severe famine. This famine was another sign of the many ways in which a disastrous war was killing people. South Sudan had at that point been in a civil war for three years, with the humanitarian situation steadily deteriorating since war broke out in December 2013. The governing Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and its army, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), had split following a long-brewing political conflict. In the first few days of the war, political rivalry had turned into fierce fighting; killings were targeted along ethnic lines. President Salva Kiir remained in charge of the government and the national army, while a coalition of military commanders headed by former Vice President Riek Machar became the SPLM-in Opposition (SPLM-iO). The first scrambled international efforts after fighting started supported a quick, but unsuccessful, ceasefire. After one and a half years of negotiations, and pressure applied by the international community, government and opposition signed the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS) in August 2015, which stipulated that the two warring parties would share power in government. What was intended as a peace deal, however, continues to make South Sudan more violent as despite the agreement, violence continues to spread. I n July 2016, renewed fighting between the forces of the government and the SPLM-iO forced opposition leader Machar to flee the country. The United Nations (UN) has since accused the government of preparing genocide. And yet, the international community, the government, and parts of the opposition

This document is the author's final accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. ''They forget what they came for'': Uganda's army in Sudan Mareike Schomerus Uganda's army, the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF), has been operating on Sudanese territory since the late 1990s. From 2002 to 2006, a bilateral agreement between the governments in Khartoum and Kampala gave the Ugandan soldiers permission to conduct military operations in Southern Sudan to eliminate the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Instead of conducting a successful operation against Uganda's most persistent rebels-who had withdrawn into Sudanese territory and acted as a proxy force in Sudan's civil war-the UPDF conducted a campaign of abuse against Sudanese civilians. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted over several years, this article documents local experiences of a foreign army's involvement in the brutal Sudanese civil war. It outlines why continued operations of the UPDF outside their borders recreate the same problem they purport to be fighting: abuses of civilians. Since 2008, US military support for the UPDF mission against the LRA has called into question the viability of continued militarisation through an army that has committed widely documented human rights abuses. The foreign military has not brought peace to the region. Instead, it has made a peaceful environment less likely for residents of South Sudan.