South Sudan’s parliament should revise the pending National Security Service Amendment Bill to bring an end to the agency’s arbitrary arrests and other abusive practices, two rights groups said today.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch published a joint letter to parliament detailing the bill’s problematic provisions as well as several positive provisions.

“An in-depth review and revision of outstanding gaps in the law governing the National Security Service is critical to reining in the notorious agency,” said Mausi Segun, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Parliament needs to ensure that the pending law genuinely limits the security service’s powers and strengthens oversight of the agency’s activities.”

The current National Security Service Act of 2014 gives the agency broad and unqualified powers that allow it to commit serious abuses with impunity, creating and sustaining a climate of repression and fear.

The bill to amend the 2014 law currently before parliament was drafted by the National Constitutional Amendment Committee (NCAC) as part of the reforms initiated by the 2018 peace agreement. Following lack of consensus by committee members about the agency’s authority to make arrests, the bill was referred to the Justice Ministry in 2019 and then to the presidency in April 2021 for resolution.

In December 2022, the justice minister recommended to the cabinet and presidency that the agency’s authority to arrest and detain suspects should be limited. In February 2023, the presidency agreed to abolish the agency’s authority to arrest and detain people, with or without a warrant. In May, the bill was presented for its first reading in parliament within two weeks, which has since elapsed.  

The bill includes a series of positive provisions, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said.

The organizations pointed out that it introduces guiding principles founded on a respect for human rights and prohibits torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; and prohibits detention or confinement by security agents. It also gives the justice minister and civilian courts a greater role in prosecuting agency officials accused of crimes.

Two organizations, however, said the bill still contains vague and broad provisions that would allow the agency to continue to abuse human rights, the organizations said.

While the Bill revokes sections 54 and 55 of the National Security Service Act, which gave the agency the authority to arrest with or without a warrant, it retains its arrest authority “under emergency circumstances.”

During the bill’s review, parliament should remove this power of arrest, the organizations said.

Parliament should make clear that the agency cannot detain civilians under any circumstances, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said.

The bill's overly broad definition of “crimes against the state” as “any activity directed at undermining ... the government” and reference to the same crime in the 2008 Penal Code Act, which is equally vague, is problematic, according to the two rights groups.

They called on the South Sudanese government to order the closure of all unauthorized detention sites operated by the security agency and release detainees or hand them over to legitimate law enforcement officials for charge and fair trial.

The organizations called on the South Sudanese authorities to also disclose the whereabouts, status, and condition of Morris Mabior Awikjiok, a South Sudanese refugee transferred from Kenya in early March.

He is reportedly being held incommunicado at the security agency’s Blue House detention site.