A/HRC/45/CRP.4 create a challenging environment for the implementation of transitional justice in South Sudan, they are not a reason to avoid transitional justice; rather, they underscore why measures for accountability, reconciliation, and healing are necessary. The majority of the internally displaced persons and refugees are unable to return to their homes due to lack of essential services such as food, water, sanitation, shelter, as well as insecurity. Civilians continue to experience violations resulting from armed hostilities and inter-communal violence including killings, rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, abductions, disappearances, destruction of property, and mass displacement.24 36. The Government of South Sudan continues to deploy its national security apparatus to suppress dissent, debate, and inclusive participation on governance issues, including accountability and implementation of the peace process.25 This situation is characterised by heightened state surveillance, clamp downs on radio stations and newspapers, fear and selfcensorship, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and restrictions on citizens’ exercise of their rights to information, expression, and association, mostly affecting civil society activists, journalists, human rights defenders, and opposition politicians. The outcome has been the entrenchment of a police state. 37. These violations are often carried out by the National Security Service (NSS), which uses extra-legal measures, including requiring civil society organisations to secure approvals before conducting activities as a means to frustrate and infiltrate their programmes, surveillance of social media and digital communications, and arbitrary arrests to create a chilling effect among targeted individuals who express critical or dissenting views against the Government.26 As a consequence, victims are largely absent in public policy discussions, mainly due to justifiable fears of persecution if they speak publicly about their experiences.27 38. To date, the Government has failed to establish programmes to create public awareness on Chapter V of the R-ARCSS and initiate a process of national reconciliation and healing, although these were prerequisites in the pre-transitional period implementation of the peace agreement. These processes would have been essential beginning efforts to reformulate the Government’s relationship and engagement with victims and conflict-affected communities as rights-holders, and identify victims’ priorities and concerns regarding their rights to truth, justice, and reparation. Victims and stakeholders have also raised concerns regarding the lack of inclusivity and broad participation of all stakeholders and conflict-affected communities in the on-going national dialogue process and consultations on the creation of the CTRH. If left unaddressed, these concerns have the potential to undermine the quality and credibility of these institutions, and, ultimately, the goals of achieving national reconciliation and healing. 39. More than two years since the signing of the R-ARCSS, the Government has failed to initiate an inclusive and participatory process of national healing and reconciliation. Such a process is essential, and would have begun setting the ground for transitional justice measures by identifying critical issues of concern, needs, and priorities of conflict-affected victims and communities.28 Involvement of the African Union and other regional and international actors 40. The African Union has been afforded a critical role in the implementation of the RARCSS and the transitional justice framework therein. Notably, the AU is mandated to establish the Hybrid Court for South Sudan, appoint judges and prosecutors to the Hybrid Court, and nominate Commissioners to the CTRH. The R-TGoNU is further obligated to cooperate with the AU’s mechanisms and organs in developing and implementing other transitional justice mechanisms under Chapter V of the R-ARCSS. The Reconstituted Joint Monitoring & Evaluation Commission (R-JMEC) is also expected to report to various organs 24 See, generally, A/HRC/43/56 and https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=26167&LangID=E. 25 See additional details in the annexed Transitional justice workshop report. (Annex I). 26 See Report of the Secretary General on the Situation in South Sudan – S/2019/936 – 11 December 2019. 27 ERN 102903 – 102908; and Confidential meeting 30 October 2019. 28 See Articles 1.4.3.3 and 2.1.11.6 of the R-ARCSS, which require the TGoNU to initiate a national reconciliation and healing process at the beginning of the pre-transitional period, “led by the Parties to the agreement, faith-based groups and civil society organizations inside and outside South Sudan”, including “all forces and affected people”. 9