FILE: Underage detainees line up during a judiciary authority visit to assess the conditions of juveniles held at Juba prison in October 2024. Credit: Michael Daniel/Eye Radio

The Gender-Based Violence and Juvenile Court in Juba has relocated its sessions to the reformatory facility within Juba National Prison to address a backlog of 200 pending cases.

Judge Andrew Jashuw Lado revealed that the mobile court initiative, launched in collaboration with the Judicial Authority and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), began on December 5 and will run until December 31.

The mobile court is composed of a dedicated team, including two High Court judges, Two Juvenile and Gender Court judges, four female lawyers, and two Public Prosecutors

The other members of the mobile court are two court employees.

Judge Lado highlighted significant challenges during the sessions, particularly the difficulty in reaching complainants who have changed their residence or phone numbers.

This has delayed the resolution of cases, some of which date back to 2015 and 2016, due to incomplete investigations.

Judge Andrew Jashuw Lado spoke to Eye Radio reporter Michael Daniel at Juba National Prison yesterday.

“This initiative, in partnership between the judiciary and the United Nations Development Programme, came after noticing the overcrowding of the juvenile prison with a large number of cases under consideration, which amounted to about 200 cases referred to the court,” Judge Andrew stated.

“We were able to adjudicate a large percentage of them, and there are other cases under consideration due to incomplete investigations, some of which date back to the year 2015-2016 and have not been adjudicated,” he said.

“Among the challenges we faced was transportation, which was resolved by transferring the elite to prison.

“Now we have the problem of the absence of complainants, which caused a delay in adjudicating the cases due to the change of residential address and phone numbers, which made it difficult to communicate with them to announce the date of the sessions,” he stated.

The mobile court aims to expedite justice for juvenile and gender-related cases while addressing systemic delays.

South Sudan’s legal system has been seriously neglected due to decades of conflict: lack of court infrastructure and justice services in remote areas; increased unaddressed cases and lengthy periods of detention of suspects.

UNDP has provided technical support to the Judiciary and the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs to design a mobile court system and tools to enable court monitoring.

In October 2023, a prison official in South Sudan reported that there were approximately 1,014 juveniles in the country’s prisons. The official also said that Juba, Wau, and Rumbek were the most overcrowded prisons in the country

The Director of the Legal Department in Central Equatoria Saber Wani says about 300 in the Juba reformatory school

In 2020, UNICEF released 85 children from detention in South Sudan to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

In 2020, the UNMISS reviewed the cases of about 100 juveniles in Juba who had not heard their cases.