Interactive Dialogue with OHCHR Technical Assistance and Capacity-Building for South Sudan (res. 49/35)
Statement by the Delegation of the United States of America
Human Rights Council – 52nd Session
Thank you, Mr./Madam Vice/President.
We welcome OHCHR’s continued reporting on the human rights situation in South Sudan. We are disturbed by reports of widespread conflict-related abuses, including sexual violence, and by restricted political and civic space. We call on the government of South Sudan to increase meaningful efforts to tackle impunity and ensure accountability.
The United States and other countries have supported transitional justice efforts in South Sudan for years, including by providing millions of dollars to assist South Sudanese survivors and to train judges, lawyers, and civil society to investigate atrocities.
The failure to create transitional justice mechanisms more than four years after these mechanisms were agreed to in the Revitalized Agreement shows that, while technical assistance is useful, it needs political will to succeed.
We welcome OHCHR’s technical assistance. We also encourage the Government of South Sudan to continue utilizing the deep expertise of the Commission of Human Rights in South Sudan. The Commission’s mandate is especially crucial given the continued absence of transitional justice mechanisms in South Sudan.
We would like to ask the distinguished panelists, how can we create conditions for the protection of fundamental freedoms, which are a prerequisite to an open and inclusive process for drafting a constitution and the eventual conduct of free and fair elections?
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