Recommendations

To the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS)

Increase police recruitment, improve training, and speed up deployment throughout Southern Sudan, adjusting existing plans so as to prioritize areas that are particularly volatile.
Until there is full deployment of the police, ensure that sufficient numbers of trained and equipped Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) soldiers are deployed to areas that are prone to conflict, and that they are trained in methods of protecting civilians from conflict by inter alia, establishing buffer zones and rural security posts. Ensure that forces are ethnically mixed as appropriate to the context of their deployment.
Ensure SPLA soldiers who are deployed to perform policing functions are trained in basic elements of policing and in human rights principles and are held accountable if they violate these.
Ensure deployment of trained and equipped legal and judicial authorities as widely as possible throughout Southern Sudan, adjusting existing development plans so as to prioritize areas affected by high levels of conflict, possibly through mobile courts.
Ensure senior community and government leaders pro-actively engage communities to address conflict and reduce the risk of human rights violations.
Ensure that authorities planning and executing civilian disarmament campaigns adopt procedures that uphold international human rights standards, including being held accountable if violations of human rights, including the right to life, take place.

UNMIS should take all necessary steps, such as revising military directives, to make operational the mission’s mandated civilian protection role. It should clearly define the mission’s protection policy, identifying a range of possible interventions, and communicate the policy within the mission to national and regional government counterparts and to local communities.
UNMIS should allocate assets so as to increase its ability to respond quickly to violence. It should increase its presence in areas likely to experience violence, including intercommunal fighting and violence related to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) elections and referendum processes.
UN police training programs should be measured for impact, and include law enforcement methods appropriate to cattle-raiding and other communal violence.
UNMIS and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) should deploy additional human rights officers across Southern Sudan and ensure human rights officers have the means to investigate reports of large-scale crime and the state’s responses, and offer recommendations to improve civilian protection.

International donors should support the GoSS to recruit, train, and deploy police beyond existing levels, prioritizing potential volatile areas.
Donors should ensure training programs for SPLA soldiers and address methods of civilian protection, including in the context of intercommunal violence.
Donors should ensure that elections support includes programs to support rule of law and protection of civilians in the lead up to elections and referendum.
Donors should press the GoSS authorities involved in civilian disarmament campaigns to adopt procedures that uphold human rights.
In addition to longer-term support for comprehensive justice sector development, donors should in the short-term support the GoSS in ensuring accountability for large-scale intercommunal violence in remote areas.