The Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, with support from the Human Rights Division of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) on Tuesday launched the ministry`s official website.
Speaking during the launch of www.mojca.gov.ss at the Justice Ministry`s headquarters in Juba, Undersecretary Dr. Isaac Gabriel Awow said setting up a website for the ministry has been long overdue.
He revealed the ministry had a website for a short time before independence but it was not maintained.
“We are facing many challenges in the ministry, especially with the dissemination of the laws. People are not getting access to laws because everybody wants to have a hardcopy law and yet we are finding difficulties to print laws,” Dr. Awow said. “Now it is easier for anybody. Even the public wants to know their rights so now it is good that we have this website. It will help all of us the lawyers and the public so that they have access (to laws), especially even those who are in the states.”
“We promise that this website will continue feeding information about the justice system in the whole country and especially what the Ministry of Justice is doing,” he added.
The undersecretary said the ministry has a technical team and office that will handle and update the website.
For his part, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Justice Ruben Madol Arol said South Sudan has to move along with the world to embrace e-technology.
“We have a bigger challenge than just transforming the institution and giving services to the people. We have the urgent task of implementing the agreement and so many people have remarked about the Constitutional Making Process in Chapter 6 of the peace agreement, the Transitional Justice Mechanisms, and the institutional reforms across the board,” he explained. “However, for us, more importantly, reforms in the security and the justice sector are a priority. And that connection was determined three years back that we needed to focus on the capacities within the institution, technical support to enable us effectively play our role in the implementation of the requirements of the agreement.”
“I want to say that the website we are celebrating today is a result of a resolution that was passed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that in the course of the implementation of the agreement, the UN agencies have to provide support to the government and the people of South Sudan,” Justice Madol added.
Meanwhile, Napoleon Adok Gai, the Director General for the National Communication Authority (NCA), urged the Justice Ministry to keep updating new information on the website and create email addresses for all staff using the portal of the official website.
“The website will be a beautiful thing but come back after six weeks and you will find out that there are no updates and it is the same thing as the day we launched it,” he challenged. “These expatriates among us here might leave the country and go back but they would like to look back and it will be embarrassing when they see pictures of the day of the launch.”
Adok appealed to the Justice Ministry to embrace cyber security tools as any compromise will have negative effects on the institution.