Introductory remarks at the Spokesperson’s noon briefing, 9 February 2015, by the Assistant Secretary-General Ivan Šimonović, on his human rights mission to South Sudan

I have returned to South Sudan after one year. Though the scale and severity of the conflict has recently declined, there are more people in our protection sites, now over 100,000; the number of displaced and refugees has continued to grow, reaching 2 million people, there are thousands more civilians dead and new humanitarian law and  human rights violations have been committed by both sides.

I met people whose whole families have been executed, primarily due to their ethnicity; women and girls who were taken as sex slaves after their husbands were killed and heavily armed child soldiers in Bentiu.

Besides the conflict between the SPLA and the SPLA – IO, there are many local conflicts across the country between tribes or even within clans of the same tribe. They include looting and cattle raiding, but mutual killings and sexual violence as well.

Millions of $USD that could have been directed towards social development have been wasted on conflict. Due to suspended economic trade, millions have also been lost by neighboring states, and the international community has been investing in emergency relief instead of capacity-building and development.

However, there are also positive developments. There is an increasing thirst for peace and justice among a broad spectrum of civil society.

Government is also increasingly acknowledging its human rights obligations. I welcome the ratifications of a series of international human rights instruments, a significant development for this young country. It has been agreed at the meeting with President Kiir that in the following days the ratification instruments- and I have copies of them with me- will be deposited with the Secretary-General. Respect for the rights contained within them will then become international obligations.

There is a more broad acknowledgment of the need to break the cycle of impunity with a number of concrete measures taken to address accountability. As a local NGO representative told me, “peace has always died when we ignored justice.”

The African Union (AU) has undertaken a groundbreaking initiative with the establishment of a commission of inquiry into the human rights violations committed in South Sudan following the outbreak of violence in December 2013. Their report has been recently submitted to the AU Peace and Security Council, but its consideration has been deferred until the imminent conclusion of the peace agreement. I am hopeful that the AU will soon publicly release the report and support the implementation of its findings.

President Kiir also assured me that the results of the national investigations into serious human rights violations following the outbreak of violence, presented to him in December 2014, will also be publicly released soon.

I welcome the ‘accountability references’ in the recently signed Arusha and Addis agreements. As I made clear during my last visit to the country, meaningful accountability for serious human rights violations committed during the conflict is the only way to prevent their re-occurrence. As the Secretary-General has said, you can have both peace and justice – they are mutually reinforcing.

In the meantime, I encourage confidence-building measures between the parties. These would include free access to all detained; cooperation in tracing missing persons and the release of conflict-related detainees by both sides.

There is also a need to improve security and  justice system, but it will not be easy. In Juba I heard from government officials and the Chief Justice and Supreme Court justices of the limited amount of judges and prosecutors throughout the country. In the whole of the country, there are no more than 100-200 judges. Outside of the Capital the situation is even worse. For example, in Eastern Equatoria State, larger than many European countries, there are only two prosecutors.

The Police Chief told me that 70% of his police officers are illiterate. The UN wants to support their capacity-building but only after those who have committed human rights violations are vetted, investigated, prosecuted and appropriately punished, in line with international standards.

For peace to be sustainable, there is a need for a free and inclusive dialogue among all social actors. Restrictions on the freedom of expression against local media are particularly disturbing. Journalists have been detained, newspapers have been confiscated and some closed, and a radio station was closed briefly.

Although it may take President Kiir and Dr. Machar to end a war and sign a peace agreement, it takes many more to ensure sustainable peace. The on-going peace process must include elders, religious leaders, youth, women and other civil society actors.