When I think of South Sudan now in its fifteen years of independence, I don’t think about political or development indicators, I think about a woman I met in Bentiu in the Upper Nile region whose home was washed away by flood waters and has survived repeated displacement. She rebuilds again only to watch the next rainy season or conflict threaten everything again.   

I think about mothers skipping meals just so their children can eat or the young children who walk to school every morning, believing education is still worth investing in despite the uncertainty surrounding them. These are people we often say and praise as resilient, and they are. Time and time again, I have witnessed extraordinary courage in places where hope has often been tested beyond imagination.  

But fifteen years later, maybe it’s time to ask an uncomfortable question. When does resilience stop being a compliment and become an excuse? South Sudan has experienced crisis after crisis. For the last fifteen years, its people have endured conflict and climate extremes, and, in most cases, communities barely recover before another crisis hits them. Yet somehow, they continue to look out for one another and hope for a better tomorrow.  

We call this resilience. It has become one of the aid and development sector’s favorite words. But have we become too comfortable celebrating it?  Because some of what we celebrate as resilience in reality is exhaustion. Selling one’s last goat to buy food is not resilience. Keeping children out of school to reduce household expenses is not resilience. Reducing meals or not eating at all for months is not resilience. Repeated dependence on humanitarian assistance is not resilience. Let's be honest, these are survival strategies. They are what people do when they don’t have any other options.  

There is a danger of constantly praising resilience because it demands very little of us. It is easier to admire people's ability to survive than to confront the political failures and the lack of international attention that make such survival necessary. South Sudan people should never have to keep proving how resilient they are.   

This year’s anniversary comes at another difficult moment. The promise of independence has yet to translate into lasting peace for many communities. Political tensions continue to cast uncertainty over the country's future and violence has intensified in some areas while climate extremes continue to displace families. The war in neighboring Sudan has added to the pressure as over 1.3 million people have crossed the border seeking safety. That burden has also stretched aid organisations who are being forced to scale back or close programs because of funding cuts just as needs continue to grow.  

Today, more than 7.8 million people in South Sudan don’t have enough to eat and some communities in Upper Nile state are once again at risk of famine as the country remains one of the worlds hunger hotspots according to the latest report.  Yet the burden falls on ordinary people. Not on those with power  

Over the past few years, working alongside South Sudan communities, I have certainly seen something international organizations often overlook. We often say we are "building resilience” but, in reality, much of the resilience already exists. It exists in how families continue to support one another despite having very little. In women who keep families together despite impossible circumstances. In local elders who resolve disputes when formal institutions stop functioning and in young generation who still have so much hope in their country despite everything.  

Perhaps our role is not to ask people to become more resilient but to stop asking too much of it. Resilience should be a choice, not people's last option.   

There is another uncomfortable question we should also ask. How resilient is the international aid system? Funding reductions, shifting geopolitical priorities, institutional restructuring as well as the increasing global crises have all tested our own ability to sustain support. Communities are repeatedly asked to prepare for future shocks, yet the system designed to support them have struggled to withstand them. Yet once again, it is the families who bear the consequences.   

The world often speaks about South Sudan through the language of crisis, sometimes through resilience. Neither is enough. When survival becomes measures we success we have already lowered our expectations too far.  

The people I have met do not want to be admired because they are resilient and can survive another conflict, political uncertainty of even the everyday climate extremes they had little to cause. They want what all of us want: a home, enough food, peace and a future that is not continuously disrupted by disasters. We should stop admiring resilience while accepting conditions that make resilience necessary. When I think back to the woman I met in Bentiu I do not remember her because she was resilient. I remember her because she should never have had to be.  

South Sudan has spent fifteen years proving the strength of its people. It should not take the next fifteen years asking them to prove it all over again.