A/HRC/45/CRP.4 that have created a trust relationship with affected communities over a period of time to carry out the consultations. Participants also reported that there is a need to enhance women’s participation in the consultations. VI. • The timing of the consultations, prior to addressing victims’/survivors’ immediate and essential needs, is likely to result in limited and ineffective engagement with affected communities. The immediate priorities of the affected communities are restoration of peace, safe return to their homes and land, and accurate documentation of their experiences. For instance, in Malakal, the consultations coincided with a period when communities were preoccupied with resolving denial of burial rights resulting from re-categorisation of states and boundaries. Furthermore, stakeholders were concerned about the feasibility of conducting consultations among victims who are still highly traumatised from conflict and related atrocities, without any form of psychosocial interventions from the state and other partners. • The period allocated for the consultations was insufficient. The context of war crimes and dealing with the past in a society that has many cultures will require careful and long-term planning and implementation; it cannot be a rushed process. • There is a tension between consultations and sensitisation. Participants observed that there is very limited knowledge about the R-ARCSS, Chapter V, and the anticipated transitional justice process among the general population in South Sudan. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to contemplate achieving effective consultations with meaningful contribution to the design of the CTRH. There is need for broad-based civic education on transitional justice and other relevant aspects of the peace agreement. Such sensitisation efforts could, for instance, debunk the growing public misperception that Chapter V and the transitional justice agenda are exclusively focused on retributive justice and aimed at seeking revenge against certain individuals in the Government. Ensuring Criminal Accountability in South Sudan Lack of political will for establishment of the Hybrid Court for South Sudan 49. Commissioner Prof. Andrew Clapham led presentations on ensuring criminal accountability for the establishment of the Hybrid Court. However, during deliberations, the civil society participants raised concerns with the Transitional Government’s continued lack of political will to establish the Hybrid Court or pursue any domestic accountability measures for conflict-related atrocities committed in South Sudan. Dr. Lam Akol pointed out that the R-TGoNU’s rejection of accountability processes was most clearly demonstrated through its hiring of a US-based lobby group in April 2019 with one of its explicit purpose being to “delay and ultimately block establishment of the hybrid court envisaged in the R-ARCSS”.89 50. Civil society participants informed the workshop that the African Union-led negotiations to set up the HCSS ended up in a deadlock since 2017, with the R-TGoNU’s failure to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the AU and adopt the Statute for establishment of the Court. The Hon. Paulino Wanawilla Unango, Minister for Justice, reported that the Council of Ministers had raised a number of reservations on some provisions in the draft Statute for the HCSS that had not yet been resolved at the time of the workshop. Ambassaor Kureng Akuei Pac Garang from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was also adamant that the HCSS could only be established following formation of the R-TGONU, which would collaborate with the AU. 51. Several stakeholders were also apprehensive about the National Dialogue process initiated by President Kiir in December 2016, which appears to have an overlapping mandate with several transitional justice, national, reconciliation, and healing mechanisms envisaged in the R-ARCSS, except accountability. Dr. Lam Akol noted that, in a sense, the National Dialogue process seems to have been set up to circumvent the Hybrid Court. 89 See https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6667-Exhibit-AB-20190418-2.pdf; and https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/04/30/south-sudanscynical-bid-block-war-crimes-court). 38