South Sudan

Promotion of the Rule of Law, Human Rights and Peaceful Conflict Resolution through Technical Legal Advice and Legal Capacity Building: Pursuant to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which was signed in 2005, the semi-autonomous region of Southern Sudan acquired its own constitutional framework, the Interim Constitution of Southern Sudan (ICSS), for the transitional period of 2005–2011. After the independence referendum in 2011, which resulted in the secession of South Sudan from Sudan, President Salva Kiir Myardit appointed a Technical Committee to revise the ICSS, subsequent to which the revised constitution was adopted by the regional parliament, the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly (SSLA) on 6 July 2011, just prior to South Sudan’s independence on 9 July 2011.

The Max Planck Foundation has been active in South Sudan before and after its secession from Sudan. Our projects are a continuation of the research projects of the Global Knowledge Transfer working group of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL), which was active in Sudan since 2002. After the referendum on independence in January 2011, a meeting with high-ranking Southern Sudanese legal experts on the then constitutional order took place in Heidelberg. This initiative provided a neutral platform to discuss required amendments to the ICSS due to the upcoming secession as well as the future relations between South Sudan and Sudan.

Since that time, the Foundation’s activities in South Sudan have involved the provision of technical legal capacity building for a range of actors, including: the Judiciary, the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, the National Legislative Assembly and its subsequent Transitional National Legislative Assembly, the Council of States, and the National Constitutional Review Commission, amongst others.

• Supporting Constitution-Making, Legal Harmonisation and Judicial Reform in South Sudan

• Support to the Constitutional Process in South Sudan
• Strengthening the Rule of Law in South Sudan
• Supporting Institutional Access to Justice in South Sudan
• Supporting Transitional Justice Capacities of the South Sudan Supreme Court
• Technical Support to the Supreme Court of South Sudan
• Legal Capacity Building Seminars for the Legislature (National Legislative Assembly and Council of States)
• International Treaty Law Seminars for Various South Sudanese Ministries
• Meetings, Workshops and Forums