South Sudan – To achieve durable peace, accountability and the rule of law, the overarching goal of many of the efforts made by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the UN family and other partners is to strengthen every link of the justice system in the world's youngest country.
Despite a challenging context - with a lack of qualified legal professionals and difficulties in implementing parallel systems of customary and formal law being two main factors complicating matters - the peacekeeping mission's Rule of Law and Security Institutions Section (RoLSIS) and colleagues from other sections managed to help South Sudan's judicial make progress on multiple fronts.
With the nation's law enforcement institutions slowly improving, the different communities we came to serve benefit in various ways, whether it is by increased access to justice, better policing, rehabilitation and more humane treatment of prisoners or people feeling safer as they go about their daily lives.
In Liethnom in Warrap State, more than 50 prisoners became ex-inmates when a judicial review of their cases proved that they had been wrongly detained.
In other places, incarcerated individuals were given more adequate physical conditions, for example by constructions of separate facilities for young and female inmates or increased equal opportunities after being handed the opportunity to learn new skills by means of vocational trainings.
In Pibor, such capacity building, with the potential to generate future incomes, was combined with increasing food security and nutrition by teaching inmates to grow their own fruits and vegetables in well-tended gardens.
In the year that passed, at least some victims and survivors of crimes, some of them heinous, could enjoy justice being served. In several locations across the country, including Leer and Bor, some of them used to feeling that their grievances didn’t matter could access visiting mobile courts and have their cases adequately dealt with by prosecutors and judges brought in.
In some places, these temporary deployments of legal professionals turned into long-term ones.
Initiatives like these didn’t just serve accountability for hundreds of cases, focusing on both civilian as well as military wrongdoings, they also inspired law reforms that became milestones, reshaping customs that had not been reformed in decades to integrate effective prosecution of gender-based violence and abolish early child marriage.
The impact goes beyond the quantitative. Every case, every project, every workshop, and reform is a testimony to the people that are slowly regaining or gaining trust in the power of justice.
People that are ready to play their own part in trusting and creating environments that will contribute to safer environments for everyone and everywhere across South Sudan.
By Jaella Brockmann
