(written by Carola Lingaas, Jeremy Sarkin and Jessica Jonsson)
Following a referendum in 2011, South Sudan became independent from Sudan after decades of protracted armed conflict. The optimism for a peaceful future of the world’s newest nation state quickly evaporated when internal power struggles between the President and Vice-President arose. These political tensions reignited violence and led to the outbreak of an internal armed conflict along ethnic lines. Political actors instrumentalised ethnic identity, transforming elite rivalry into widespread violence against civilian populations.
In 2015, an Agreement for the Resolution of the Crisis in South Sudan (ARCISS) was brokered with the aim of dealing with past human rights violations. As part of this framework, a range of transitional justice laws, policies, and institutions were envisaged, including the establishment of a Commission for Truth, Reconciliation and Healing (CTRH). The CTRH is mandated to establish an authoritative account of atrocities, promote national reconciliation, and provide recommendations for justice and reparations. Despite its central role, the Commission has faced major obstacles due to its slow operationalisation. Meanwhile, the conflict is far from resolved, and the country’s security situation is highly volatile. Human rights abuses have become endemic.
South Sudan constitutes a significant case for transitional justice scholarship because these mechanisms were initiated amid an ongoing armed conflict. As such, it challenges the classical paradigm of transitional justice as a post-conflict process in which a society gradually moves from violence to post-conflict stability, peace, and – hopefully – democratic consolidation. Transitional justice is commonly understood as a toolbox of different mechanisms designed to confront past harms and create a more just future for victims and society as a whole. Generally, these mechanisms consist of five recognised pillars: legal accountability (often in the form of criminal trials), truth seeking mechanisms, reparations, reconciliation and guarantees of non-repetition. In recent years, scholars and practitioners have emphasised the importance of memorialisation as an additional pillar, reflecting the importance of collective memory and public acknowledgment.
Establishing a comprehensive account of the past is increasingly seen as vital when a society has experienced massive human rights violations. As a result, over the last three or so decades, transitional justice processes have become the norm for states emerging from conflict, instability, or authoritarian rule. Critically, the manner in which a nation deals with its past reverberates throughout its present and has a huge impact on its political legitimacy, social cohesion, and institutional trust. Both domestic and international actors often measure the success of transitions by examining a nation’s treatment of the past, including how victims and perpetrators are treated and recognised.
Historically, early transitional justice mechanisms in the 1980s and 1990s evolved where authoritarian regimes collapsed and more stable contexts enabled democratic transitions. In the last decades, several cases have emerged, in which societies have not transitioned from authoritarian, violent conflicts into democracies, but have nonetheless applied transitional justice tools. Such aparadigmatic cases have occurred, among others, in Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, all stable democracies that established Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) to address colonial and historical injustices. These cases have contributed to the broadening of the analytical scope of transitional justice as an academic field and area of practice. Yet other cases of transitional justice do neither confirm to the classic paradigm nor the aparadigmatic cases: in South Sudan transitional justice is pursued within an ongoing armed conflict.
Crucially, South Sudan has experienced prolonged periods of armed conflict even prior to achieving independence. Roughly fifty years of internal armed conflict (between the Sudanese government and several rebel groups from the southern regions) within the borders of Sudan has now transitioned into a new phase, involving different armed groups vying for control within the newly delineated borders of South Sudan. Some initiatives aimed at achieving legal accountability for serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law have been undertaken. In addition to the customary legal and the domestic justice system, efforts have been made to create a hybrid criminal court. Yet, the implementation has largely stalled. The hybrid court, for instance, remains unrealised, primarily because the government has yet to pass enabling legislation for the court’s establishment. Others blame the African Union for inaction.
However, it could be argued that the delays are strategic. South Sudan is one of several cases, where transitional justice becomes instrumentalised by political elites. Rather than functioning as a genuine mechanism for accountability, transitional justice thus risks becoming a quasi-process—half-heartedly and rhetorically endorsed to satisfy donors or external pressure. Comparative experience illustrates this risk: in the Balkans, for example, the UN Security Council mandated the creation of the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and, as such, kicked off the transitional justice process within the pillar of accountability, complemented by domestic prosecutions. However, attempts to establish a regional Truth and Reconciliation Commission spanning the affected countries — Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia — never materialized. As a result, no shared truth of the conflicts emerged. The lack of such truth is particularly visible in the denial of atrocities, most notably the Srebrenica genocide, and the public celebration of war criminals, especially in the Republica Srpska. Despite relative peace, reconciliation has remained limited.
This comparison highlights the gap between transitional justice rhetoric and empirical outcomes. One might wonder, is the field of transitional justice romanticised where the rhetoric does not live up to the reality? South Sudan demonstrates how normative aspirations can outpace reality. Substantial effort is required to ensure that transitional justice mechanisms have tangible effects. Multiple actors must play meaningful roles: the government must remain committed to achieving peace, reconciliation, and accountability. The international community bears responsibility for sustained pressure and resources. The hybrid Court of South Sudan remains necessary to curb ongoing impunity. While the United Nations has been involved, its engagement has been insufficient, particularly in an era of shrinking budgets and declining multilateralism. This increases the importance of the African Union, which has adopted a Transitional Justice Policy that must be translated into effective practice.
Within South Sudan, all pillars of transitional justice require renewed attention, institutional support, independence, and resources. To date, the CTRH remains the only formally established mechanism, yet it has faced significant implementation challenges. An unclear operational path, including delays in appointing commissioners, and ambiguity in the commission’s temporal scope have constrained its effectiveness. International actors, including the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, have consistently urged the South Sudan government to expedite the CTRH’s work and uphold accountability, warning that without tangible progress reconciliation will remain superficial and violence cycles may continue.
The CTRH was designed to uncover atrocities, promote reconciliation, and issue recommendations on justice and reparations, operating alongside the Compensation and Reparations Authority (CRA). Its mandate allows for the possibility of recommending amnesties for individuals who fully disclose their actions, excluding those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and serious offences such as rape or murder. Despite the adoption of legal frameworks in 2024 and 2025, the CTRH has struggled to move from planning to full functionality. Political interference, administrative weaknesses, and deep-seated mistrust have prevented it from delivering measurable outcomes or fostering national healing. In 2025, renewed clashes, political repression, and worsening humanitarian conditions heightened fears of a return to full-scale conflict.
The South Sudanese situation demonstrates that the implementation of transitional justice mechanisms during periods of conflict can result in a divergence of outcomes. On the one hand, these mechanisms have the potential to promote accountability by facilitating the process of truth-telling, acknowledgement of harm, and the pursuit of justice. This includes the admission of guilt, the involvement of victims, and the undertaking of reforms. On the other hand, these mechanisms can be used to perpetuate impunity if their rhetoric is employed to evade prosecutions, silence the demands of victims, or shield influential actors under the pretext of promoting “peace” or “unity”.
South Sudan thus represents a textbook illustration of the difficulties inherent in implementing transitional justice during active conflict. Critically, authorities engaged in or benefiting from ongoing conflict have limited incentives to empower accountability mechanisms. Without pressure from the international community, such initiatives risk remaining symbolic. Nevertheless, even under adverse conditions, transitional justice processes remain essential. They can mitigate suffering, preserve memory, and lay the groundwork for future accountability once political conditions allow.
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