The Foundation provides final training on Access to Justice
Building on the success of the first three of the Max Planck Foundation’s remote workshops for the Judiciary of South Sudan, the team delivered its fourth workshop to High Court and County Court Judges on 1 and 2 December 2020. The workshop, on the subject of “The Protection and Application of Fundamental Rights in the Constitution”, is the sixth within the framework of the German Federal Foreign Office funded project, “Supporting Institutional Access to Justice in South Sudan” and the final in this series of workshops.
The two-day event implemented a video conferencing format with moderation provided by Foundation Researchers. The sessions consisted of a combination of pre-recorded thematic videos with following live discussion sessions, supplemented by additional text-based materials. The workshop was by this way able to introduce members of the South Sudan Judiciary to a topic that is of both practical and theoretical importance to their everyday work.
The Director of Training at the Judiciary, Justice Dr Benjamin Baak Deng, and the workshop Chair, Justice Kulang Jeroboam Macuor, opened the workshop on 1 December.
The workshop, which was focused on human rights in South Sudan, was comprised of five content-based sessions and a final case study to allow participants to practically apply what had been discussed. The content-based sessions reviewed international instruments and comparative regional and domestic practices to cover the history of human rights, constitutional protections for fundamental rights, South Sudan’s Bill of Rights, and procedural matters in the application of these rights. With active discussions throughout the workshop, the participants were able to accurately navigate the final case study session on practical applications of fundamental rights protections.
The workshop was closed by a representative of the participating Judges, the workshop Chair Justice Kulang Jeroboam Macuor and the Director of Learning and Training of the South Sudan Judiciary Justice Dr Benjamin Baak Deng. The closing speeches uniformly expressed appreciation to the Foundation, the South Sudan Judiciary and the German Federal Foreign Office for striving to undertake the workshop despite the restrictions imposed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as calls for further online workshops for the Justices and Judges of South Sudan.