South Sudan’s Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs and a coalition of civil society organisations said Monday that they seek to work closely in addressing the human rights situation in the country, especially the recommendations outlined by the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
Members of the civil society and the new leadership of the Justice Ministry, including the Minister, Deputy Minister, Undersecretary, and the Director for Human Rights, discussed close collaboration on how to tackle human rights issues in the country.
Addressing reporters shortly after the meeting, Jacob Chol Atem, from the Community Initiative Support Program, said they met the leadership of the Ministry of Justice to discuss the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which is in the process of reviewing human rights records of all the member states.
“We need to make sure that we open a new page and work together because the minister was saying that we as civil society in the country sometimes write reports and criticise our government,” he said
He accused some of his colleagues in the civil society of writing reports without consulting the government.
“We are all from South Sudan, and some of us fought for this country called South Sudan. If anything is done by our colleagues and friends, we do not deny it, because some of us write and do things behind backs. I am urging our colleagues in the civil society who are writing reports from outside to come together,” he said. “This country is ours. If you write your reports, it might not be listened to or taken seriously by the council, but if we come together and work as counterparts, I am quite sure we will do a lot of things in this country, and nobody will deny us.”
For his part, Adam Masco Joseph, Human Rights and Advocacy Officer for Hold the Child, a local nongovernmental organization, described their meeting with the justice minister as promising.
“This meeting was so promising in that the government and CSOs have pledged to work and collaborate to implement all the recommendations,” he said. “We have one of the mechanisms of the Human Rights Council, which is the UPR, a mechanism where all member states are reviewed periodically, and during the review, the country receives recommendations on human rights, which are implemented by the government.”
Meanwhile, Majok Dau Kuot, Counsel General and Director for Human Rights at the Ministry of Justice, said they are going to set plans on what to do every month.
“Many different institutions say a lot of human rights violations have been committed in South Sudan, and this is what we want to correct,” he said. “We are going to discuss areas of violations. We receive these (violations) through the media, but on the ground, sometimes these might not have happened.”