A technical committee for the establishment of the Commission for Truth, Reconciliation, and Healing (CTRH) last week arrived in Wau, Western Bahr el Ghazal State for consultations.
Juma Mabor Marial, the team leader of the committee, told Radio Tamazuj over the weekend that the purpose of the visit is to carry out public consultations and collect views that will guide the setting up of the CTRH.
“The purpose of our public consultations is to get the views of the people of South Sudan from across all sectors and those views will help us to formulate a law which will then be used to establish the Commission for Truth, Reconciliation, and Healing,” he said.
Marial said that apart from planning meetings with different stakeholders, they were able to hold public meetings with parliamentarians, the state executive, director generals and heads of commissions, and members of the judiciary.
He added that they also met civil society organizations, religious leaders, traditional chiefs, youth and women groups and people with disability, and members of organized forces among others.
“The issues we expect people to present are on how the commission should be established, including the period it should take to carry out investigations into the root causes of the conflict,” Marial explained. “The legacy of conflict in South Sudan from 2005 to 2018 and also looking at the violations of human rights breaches of the rule of laws and also any other crime that have been committed by the state and non-state actors.”
He said that in their meetings with the people of Western Bahr el Ghazal state, many called for the protection of the victims.
“Some of the things that they raised include the protection of victims and even people in the commission, they also raised the issues of the implementation in the reports that are being submitted either to the government or to the other institutions,” he said. They are concerned about what would happen in case their views are collected and nothing is done.”
The team will visit all the three counties in the state and report back to the capital Juba on 27 May to submit its report to the ministry of Justice which will then draft the law and present it to the national assembly for deliberation.