Department of Justice Brings Legal Expertise to Southern Sudan

Sudan is a country that has suffered under civil unrest for more than five decades, and Canada is part of a concerted international effort to support a just and lasting peace throughout that country. In support of that effort, the Department of Justice’s International Legal Programs Section (ILPS) recently completed a project designed to strengthen the justice sector and promote the rule of law in Southern Sudan. 

The Southern Sudan Legal Resource Centre and Law Library Project was developed to provide the Government of Southern Sudan with the knowledge, training, resources and sustainable capacity to operate a law library in Juba, the region’s capital.

Directed by Aly N. Alibhai, Senior Counsel in ILPS, and Eve Poirier, Head Librarian with the Department’s Prairie Regional Office in Edmonton, the project came to fruition with the opening of the first fully functioning common law legal library in Southern Sudan. The centre was inaugurated by the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs during an official visit to Juba on March 28, 2008.

This project was financed under the auspices of the Global Peace and Security Fund, which is administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). It is an important component of the Government of Canada’s support of both the United Nations and African Union peacekeeping missions in Sudan. This support also includes using diplomatic channels to pursue sustainable political solutions and to address the root causes of the conflicts, and providing humanitarian, reconstruction and peacebuilding assistance to affected populations.

Since 2005, when the people of Southern Sudan were given the right to form their own regional government, officials and lawmakers have been struggling to establish institutions founded on respect for the rule of law. However, they lacked many of the legal resources to create a new government and provide access to justice for their people. 

To help address the issue, Justice’s Eve Poirier travelled to Juba in January 2007 as part of a joint DFAIT and Justice assessment mission to the region. Over the course of two weeks, and another two in July, she interviewed members of the legal community and various government ministries, and put together an ambitious plan to build a resource centre designed to serve the needs of the new government. After 20 years of Shari’a law enforced by the government based in the northern half of the country, the new system would be built on a combination of common law traditions and customary practices from the many tribes of the area.

As well as collecting the laws of Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and England to guide future law-makers, Eve also had to locate traditional Sudanese publications made scarce by nearly 50 years of civil war. In the end, she had all of the Sudan Notes and Records reprinted – a feat which involved works from 1916 to the 1960s.

There were other challenges. The books could not be shipped directly to Juba – streets have no names, no delivery system exists and there was no one to receive the shipments. So the project team decided to send the materials to the offices of Law Africa Legal Publishing in Nairobi, Kenya. Christine Fish, of ILPS, facilitated the purchase of materials from all over the world and arranged for many of the shipments to go to Katarina Juma, who served as the project’s field coordinator, in Nairobi.

However, by the time the completed collection could be shipped to Juba, Kenya was in upheaval over recent elections and the Government of Canada had banned all travel to Nairobi. Instead, the team travelled to Khartoum, the sovereign capital of Sudan, and arranged to ship the books from there to Juba. Eve, Christine and two local librarians had to carry the books in burlap bags to the small portable structure that was to house the resource centre.

Their difficulties went well beyond just finding and accumulating the books for a collection. When Eve first travelled to Juba, the only way in or out of that part of Sudan was on a United Nations or World Food Programme airplane. There is no running water and very little food, and any electricity comes from generators. The roads have been heavily bombed, marauding bands roam the outskirts, and most people are, or recently had been, refugees.

Fortunately, the infrastructure is improving rapidly. Life is being rebuilt in Juba, and over her three visits, Eve saw many of the changes firsthand. Although drinking water and food must still be shipped in, commercial flights have begun to fly into the city and many buildings are under construction – including a new library that will replace the portable in which Eve and her colleagues housed the collection. And in spite of all this adversity, only one of the shipments failed to arrive – and in that case, the books were quickly reordered.  

Like all things in Sudan, the resource centre is improving, albeit slowly. A young Kenyan librarian, Dorcas Obwa, has been trained and now operates the resource centre. She e-mails Eve regularly to talk about her work.

Thanks to the hard work of the Southern Sudan Legal Resource Centre and Law Library Project team, legislators in Southern Sudan now have the resources they need to rebuild the legal system of this troubled but hopeful region.