Governance

Despite the end of the civil war in 2005, many people in South Sudan continued to experience a deep sense of insecurity due to the many different types of violent conflict in the country. This sense of insecurity is exacerbated by the lack of protection from the state and the perceived injustice in how power is distributed at the national level. Based on a study carried out in 2013, prior to the country’s relapse into large-scale violence, this article discusses gendered insecurity and agency among the Latuko in Imatong state. In response to their sense of insecurity, the Latuko have developed security arrangements that represent forms of hybrid security governance. Using a notion of masculinity, the article will reflect on the gender dynamics in these local security arrangements. This shows that the social order that customary institutions create can contribute to an increase in violence against women at the domestic level. However, although women are excluded from the decision-making institutions that govern the security arrangements, they exercise subtle forms of agency to influence them.

The report “Trafficking in Persons in South Sudan: Prevalence, Responses and Challenges” analyzes the nature of trafficking in persons in the country, its forms, challenges and the legal gaps in the present legal framework in South Sudan. It provides recommendations that the Technical Taskforce and its partners are set to address. TIP is a heinous crime that exploits human beings. It comes in many forms, including forced labor, forced marriages, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude among others. It’s in this report that the nation gets to know what TIP is in South Sudan. The report highlights that the current TIP provisions in the national legal frameworks are inadequate to provide a deterrence to perpetrators, including aggravating punishments to traffickers themselves. The Government of South Sudan recognizes this as the main challenge to combat TIP in the country.

The report recommends major reforms to its key government institutions and avenues to build a firm foundation to combat TIP in the country, in line with the regional and international frameworks. Currently, South Sudan does not have provisions that are commensurate to the UN Protocol to Prevent, Punish and Suppress Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Conventions against Transnational Organize Crimes and its Protocol

The justice versus peace dichotomy or lack thereof has spawned both legal practice and international law literature for decades. As the debate pertains to the application of transitional justice specifically against the backdrop of mass political violence or civil wars, some jurists, legal practitioners and other scholars suggest that, on the one hand, justice and peace are mutually exclusive concepts. This implies that neither peace nor justice can be pursued without adversely impacting or displacing the other. Others, on the other hand, maintain that peace and justice are mutually reinforcing virtues, suggesting that the pursuit of one serves to augment the other. While the third school of thought acknowledges that both peace and justice are indispensable virtues for a dignified human life, it contends that an overreliance on the pursuit of justice at all costs is detrimental for sustainable peace. As well, it argues that justice should not be sacrificed on the altar of peace. In this regard, the third way proposes that the stringent standards of pursuing peace and justice should be relaxed in the interest of a balanced solution. Cognizant of the fact that South Sudan is a deeply divided and polarized country, this piece suggests that the most appropriate vehicle for pursuing transitional justice in South Sudan is in the form of truth, reconciliation and healing (TRH) and, perhaps, compensation but not through criminal prosecutions of the actions of key players in the recently concluded conflict. Failure to observe the delicacy of balancing peace and justice only operates to fester the conflict. That is in part because key actors in a mass political conflict are cushioned by their (ethnic) constituencies and in part because, generally, justice deferred solely for the sake of peace may actually breed more insecurity just as sacrificing peace for the sake of justice only yields incendiary results.