South Sudan’s Transitional Justice Imbroglio
- IJLLR Journal
- Sep 27
- 1 min read
Nyuol Justin Y Arop, Chairperson, South Sudan Human Rights Commission
ABSTRACT
Transitional justice is usually defined as the means by which a society deploys a range of mechanisms to address past injustices. This paper argues that South Sudan’s transitional justice process does not augur with this conception. The irreconcilable nature between the concept of transitional justice and political context of South Sudan renders transitional justice, in the case of South Sudan, inept to address past abuses. The paper does so by analyzing the three transitional justice mechanisms as the operate, at times, in isolation or in tandem with each other and conclude that the interaction and operation of the mechanisms conduce tensions that encourage policy makers to abandon, en masse, the transitional project but at the risk of attracting a referral of the Republic of South Sudan to the International Criminal Court via a United Nations Security Council Resolution. The paper also analyzes the possibility of the neighboring States’ electing to exercise the doctrine of passive personality available to them, even though, such an option is likely to be undermined by regional and political dynamics.
Keywords: transitional justice; commission for truth reconciliation and healing; compensation and reparation authority, hybrid court for South Sudan
