Transitional justice mechanisms in South Sudan in the aftermath of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 have not contributed to peacebuilding and reconciliation and have actually had a detrimental effect on statebuilding efforts. Both domestic elites as well as international actors involved (esp. the Troika of UK, US and Norway) have opted for a hybrid approach: attempting to transfer established patterns of transitional justice, in particular the South African model, while ensuring the de facto impunity of anyone in a position of leadership.
Hence, the various parallel institutions devoted to national or local reconciliation – so my argument - are in fact best understood as a rhetorical acceptance of international norms which fits into a wider mode of statebuilding in South Sudan in which domestic politicians and organisations in rhetoric uphold the virtues of liberal democracy while subverting them in actual fact.
