“I am ready to speak openly without fear. Justice without reparation is not justice, we need a justice that provides to all.”
Rights for Peace, CIGPJ, DRI, the Global Survivors Fund and the South Sudan Transitional Justice Working Group launched our new Study on the Status of and Opportunities for Reparations for Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence on 30 March 2022, at a virtual side event at the 49th Human Rights Council. The Study presents and analyses survivors’ perceptions and expectations for reparations and offers practical, concrete, and context-specific recommendations to policy makers and other relevant actors at national and global levels to inform the design and delivery of survivor-
centred reparations in South Sudan. Survivors indicated extreme unmet needs, including urgent medical, psychological, social, and economic needs directly resulting from the specific sexual violence experienced. The social impacts faced by survivors are particularly acute, with stigma and discrimination the norm in society. A sea change of awareness in government and in communities across South Sudan is needed to end a destructive culture of
blame against survivors.
Main recommendations
1. The Government of South Sudan should adopt legislation to establish all three transitional justice mechanisms under the 2018 R-ARCSS and ensure these processes are survivor-centred. Truth telling and acknowledgment are fundamental, but accountability is also needed to reverse the culture of impunity for CRSV.
2. Survivor-led reparations are needed, which may include awareness-raising to counter stigma, medical and psychosocial care, and livelihoods support. Specific provisions for children born of rape are needed.
3. The Government of South Sudan should provide the Technical Committee on the Commission for Truth, Reconciliation and Healing with the requisite support, time, and resources for effective consultations, including with survivors.
4. Civic space needs to open-up for transitional justice to take place. Journalists and civil society actors should be able to speak openly during public consultations and elsewhere without fear of arrest, and surveillance or intimidation.
Survivors Speak: The Impact of CRSV
This project was funded by the Global Survivors Fund (GSF). The South Sudan Reparations Study is part of a Global Reparations Study launched by GSF in 2020, which focuses on the status of and opportunities for reparations for survivors of CRSV in over 20 countries.
London - Juba, 30 March 2022.
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