Ninth Workshop with Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal of South Sudan
From 12 to 14 September 2018, representatives of the Max Planck Foundation delivered a three-day workshop entitled ‘Principles and Procedures of International Criminal Trials’ to the justices of the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal of South Sudan. Additionally, upon invitation by the Judiciary, a number of judges from the High Courts and County Courts of South Sudan were in attendance.
The workshop, held in Juba, South Sudan, was officially inaugurated by the Chief Justice of South Sudan, Justice Chan Reec Madut, and a representative of the Foundation.
The focus of this workshop was on the procedure of prosecuting international crimes both at the national and international levels. While the first day of the workshop examined the prosecution of national and other international crimes by mixed tribunals, as well as the various modes of establishing criminal liability, the second day extensively reviewed the grounds for excluding criminal responsibility under international law, along with a study of the procedural rights provided to the parties in an international criminal trial, viz: the accused, victims, and witnesses. The third and final day of the workshop was dedicated to a study of sentencing criteria applied in international criminal trials. In addition, the workshop included a case-study discussion intended to provide the participants with a hypothetical matrix based on real-life events. All topics were discussed in relation to analogous principles in South Sudanese national laws.
This workshop, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, continued the implementation of the second of three components of the project “Supporting Transitional Justice Capacities in South Sudan”.