By William Madouk<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
United Nations Human Rights Commission laments the dysfunction of the judiciary system in South Sudan that leads to an increase in violence.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Commissioner Carlos Castresana Fern\u00e1ndez said the reoccurrence of gross human rights violations cannot be stopped without having meaningful and effective justice.<\/p>\n \u201cSouth Sudan\u2019s judiciary is not functioning. It is severely under-resourced, lacks the means to be impartial and independent, and in most parts of the country it has no effective presence,\u201d Castresana said.<\/p>\n He added that they visited Jonglei state but to their disappointment, no high court judge is in place, making the prosecution of rape and murder cases virtually impossible in ordinary courts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe persistence of widespread sexual and gender-based violence, including the abductions, cannot be separated from the fact that rule of law institutions is not in place to address these crimes,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n According to Castresana, the Government has resources available to fund the development of the judiciary, but courts receive only a tiny fraction of the national budget.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile State revenues are diverted by elites. To address the persistent human rights violations, justice institutions must be properly funded.\u201d He continued \u201cTransitional justice processes, too, are an essential part and parcel of the nation\u2019s healing.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that \u201cIf the country does not have the opportunity to reckon with its past, the cycle of violence is likely to reoccur.\u201d<\/p>\n Commissioner Castresana hinted that Truth, Reconciliation, Reparations and Accountability are indivisible dimensions of transitional justice, and cannot be separated in the interests of elites, or political expediency.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring our visit, another concern we heard expressed is that there is not yet an independent referee to address disputes that may arise from electoral processes,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is cause for concern. Without a referee to resolve disputes peacefully, aggrieved parties may resort to violence,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n In December 2023, Chief Justice Chan Reech Madut lamented the lack of judges to handle the backlog of cases across the country.<\/p>\n However, he hinted that the judiciary system had a plan to hire more judges to handle cases in the awaited supplementary budget.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our plan, we have for this fiscal year budget \u2013 we make suggestions for appointment of judicial assistants, about 70 of them and we have received 500+ applicants,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n Justice Reech revealed that in his interaction with the ex-minister of finance – he agreed to put that into a supplementary budget to cater for 100 judges that would be appointed this year.<\/p>\n He added that mobile courts were introduced because of the lack of enough judges, and they are sent to states or areas that have accrued criminal cases to handle them for specific period of time.<\/p>\n Most of the states have been appealing to the judiciary to equip the area with a mobile court to handle the backlog of cases as well as build court institutions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By William Madouk United Nations Human Rights Commission laments the dysfunction of the judiciary system in South Sudan that leads to an increase in violence. Commissioner Carlos Castresana Fern\u00e1ndez said the reoccurrence of gross human rights violations cannot be stopped without having meaningful and effective justice. \u201cSouth Sudan\u2019s judiciary[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21821,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21820\/revisions\/21821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}