South Sudan: Greater Transparency Urged for UN's South Sudan Mission

United Nations — As South Sudan's fragile ceasefire threatens to unravel, human rights groups are calling on the U.N.'s mission there to make public its human rights reporting, a step they say will help lay the groundwork for reconciliation that never took place following independence in 2011.

Though the mission, UNMISS, reports to the Security Council every four months and periodically publishes press releases, it is not mandated to make public the information its human rights division collects.

"In UNMISS a lot of the leadership believed they were there to capacity-build the government. That mindset has to change now - with this conflict it's very clear that this government is party to a conflict." -- Jehanne Henry

While missions often elect to put out human rights reports regardless of their mandate, as UNMISS has done twice since its creation in 2011, observers and U.N. officials tell IPS many reports are filtered through back channels to U.N. headquarters or via longstanding private connections to human rights organisations.

With no transparency mechanism, they say, oversight is difficult and self-reflection rare. Complicating matters are Security Council members that rely on their own sources in the country and within the mission.

"We've been concerned by the lack of public reporting coming out of the mission, especially when you compare it to the output of other missions such as the one in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Ivory Coast," said Philippe Bolopion, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch.

"In a country where you have entrenched impunity, including for crimes committed by security forces, it's all the more important that the U.N. reach out and report on abuses, whoever committed them, and the U.N. Mission has not always done that," Bolopion told IPS.

In a statement, the mission told IPS that it "does not keep information from the public but we don't go into specifics, especially not while in the process of collecting evidence - which again will only be possible when we have regained full access throughout the country or at least all areas affected by violence."

"UNMISS will continue to publish reports and will continue to remain impartial in documenting, collecting and interviewing eyewitnesses from all sides and in all areas of the conflict," said a spokesperson.