A civil society activist has urged South Sudanese to take advantage of the public consultations by actively taking part in enacting legislation that will lead to the formation of the Commission of Truth, Reconciliation and Healing.
The Executive Director of Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), Edmund Yakani, said: ‘‘if you want to achieve transitional justice that will lead to the successful transformation of society from violence to peace, we need to embrace the three values concurrently.’’
He added: “The principle of transitional justice is a holistic one based on three values, healing, reconciliation, and truth-telling.
“If you want South Sudan to become more peaceful and stable. You need to take simultaneously; action for healing, truth-telling, reconciliation, compensation, and reparation. You cannot leave either of the three behind, “Yakani said.
Yakani said the three values are interlinked. The truth will not only end up in reconciliation or healing. Some of the truth requires accountability to prevail.
He further said the Commission for Truth, Reconciliation, and Healing have the obligation to refer some of the cases that come across to the other two mechanisms. “Can refer a case as a matter of healing to the compensation and reparation authority or justice to the hybrid court, so the three institutions are interlinked,” he stressed.
He went on to say that transitional justice cannot be realised in South Sudan by undermining any of the country’s three institutions.
‘‘You are not working for holistic transitional justice but rather selective transitional justice. If you are working for selective transitional justice, then you are going to suspend concerns of certain constituencies,’’ he stated.
On Tuesday, President Salva Kiir launched a public consultation on the establishment of the Commission for Truth, Reconciliation, and Healing (CTRH).
The President said establishment of the commission does not negate the other pillars, of truth, healing and reconciliation, compensation and reparation authority together with the formation of the hybrid court.
President Kiir said what the people need now is reconciliation before justice.