By Benjamin Takpiny
JUBA, South Sudan (AA) – South Sudan approved Friday the establishment of institutions and a Hybrid Court enshrined a 2018 peace deal to try war crimes during more than six years of conflict.
“[The] Cabinet authorized Justices Minister to start the process of establishing all these institutions in accordance with the provision of the peace agreement,” Minister of Information and Broadcasting Michael Makuei Lueth told reporters after a weekly Cabinet meeting that was chaired by President Salva Kiir.
Chapter 5 of the peace deal signed by Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar, who formerly led a rebellion against Kiir’s government, calls for establishing a Hybrid Court, transitional justice, accountability, reconciliation and healing institutions.
It provides a pathway to building sustainable peace based on the recognition that it can only be achieved through accountability for serious international crimes, truth recovery about past violations and underlying structural causes of political violence, as well as the restoration of dignity to South Sudanese citizens.
It also envisages a holistic set of complementary mechanisms for the purpose, namely, a Hybrid Court, the Commission on Truth, Reconciliation and Healing and the Compensation and Reparation Authority.
.The measures were designed by the African Union as appropriate to an African and South Sudanese context.
A UN panel of experts has on several occasions accused the government of delaying and obstructing the process of establishing the Hybrid Court.
