Summary
South Sudan’s National Security Service (NSS) was established in 2011, after the country gained independence. The 2011 Transitional Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan, mandates the NSS to collect information, conduct analysis, and advise relevant authorities. But since its establishment, the NSS has gone much further than merely collecting information. Within months of its establishment, its agents were arresting and imprisoning journalists, government critics and others, and conducting physical and telephonic surveillance. Today, it has become one of the government’s most important tools of repression.
Based on interviews with 48 former detainees and 37 others including policy analysts, activists, former military, security, and intelligence personnel and family members of people detained by the NSS between 2014 and 2020, this report documents serious human rights violations by the NSS in South Sudan, including torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions, unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, forced returns and violations of privacy rights. The report describes obstacles to accountability for these abuses, including denial of due process for detainees, the lack of any meaningful judicial or legislative oversight of the agency and legal immunities for NSS agents.