A/HRC/31/49 I. Introduction 1. In its resolution 29/13, the Human Rights Council requested the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) urgently to undertake a mission to engage with the Government of South Sudan, to monitor and report on the situation of human rights, and to conduct a comprehensive assessment of allegations of violations and abuses of human rights with a view to ensuring accountability and complementarity with the African Union commission of inquiry. The Council also requested the High Commissioner to present a report of the assessment at its thirty-first session. The present report is submitted to the Council pursuant to that request. 1 2. The High Commissioner deployed a team to Juba from October 2015 to January 2016. The Government of South Sudan established a task force to liaise with the team and to respond to requests for documentation and access to persons and places. 3. In accordance with its mandate, the assessment team examined alleged violations and abuses of human rights committed by both State actors and non-State armed groups from the outbreak of violence in Juba in December 2013 until the end of December 2015, taking into account reports issued by the High Commissioner, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the African Union commission of inquiry.2 The team focused particularly on violations and abuses committed in 2015. 4. Owing to severe access constraints and the limited time available, the assessment was focused on Unity and Upper Nile States, which had been most heavily affected by the conflict, and other States to which the conflict had spread, namely, Western and Central Equatoria States. This particular attention was motivated by the gravity of the allegations of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and human rights abuses, and their significance in demonstrating patterns. 5. The assessment team faced considerable challenges in conducting its work: lack of cooperation from the Government; limited access to conflict areas; and serious issues relating to the protection of victims and witnesses. 6. The assessment team was able to confirm that the patterns of human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law identified in previous reports of the United Nations and the African Union continued throughout 2015. In particular, the assessment revealed that sexual and gender-based violence, which had been a hallmark of the conflict-related violence in 2014, was widespread throughout 2015, particularly in Unity State, where government forces and affiliated militia were apparently the parties primarily responsible. The widespread character of the sexual violence against women and girls, and its broader implications for the social fabric, is a matter of grave concern. 7. In the present report, OHCHR aims to contribute and give impetus to the establishment of an effective and sustainable process of accountability, truth and reconciliation that will also provide guarantees of non-recurrence for the thousands of victims and their families who have suffered immeasurably. Failure to address the deeply engrained disregard for human life will only lead to the recurrence of such violations. 1 2 2 For detailed findings of the assessment mission undertaken by OHCHR to South Sudan, see document A/HRC/31/CRP.6. See UNMISS, Conflict in South Sudan: A Human Rights Report, 8 May 2014; African Union Commission of Inquiry Report, 15 October 2105; and OHCHR – UNMISS, The State of Human Rights in the Protracted Conflict in South Sudan, December 2015.