Event Description
Join PILPG for a virtual panel during UNGA High-Level Summit Week on September 25, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM ET / 17:00-18:00 Juba time and CEST, as we discuss the Legal Responsibility to Establish the Hybrid Court for South Sudan.
This event will feature the release of PILPG’s new report, The Legal Responsibility to Establish the Hybrid Court for South Sudan, which analyzes the legal responsibility of the African Union and the Government of South Sudan in creating the Hybrid Court. The report also offers key policy recommendations for the international community for moving forward with the court’s establishment.
Panelists include Dr. Paul R. Williams, Naana Frimpong, and Amb. (ret) Susan D. Page, along with South Sudanese voices, who will explore the report’s findings and discuss recent developments in the pursuit of justice and accountability in South Sudan. This conversation will be moderated by Professor Darin Johnson.
Don’t miss this critical conversation. We look forward to your participation!
This is part of the PILPG Thought Leadership Initiative. The Initiative focuses on prominent international law and international affairs topics and organizes monthly expert roundtables to share expertise and reflections from our work on peace negotiations, post-conflict constitution drafting, and war crimes prosecution.
Speakers
Ambassador Susan D. Page
Susan D. Page, a professor from practice at Michigan Law, was the first US ambassador to the Republic of South Sudan and served as assistant secretary-general of the United Nations in Haiti, among other senior diplomatic roles.
As ambassador to newly independent South Sudan from 2011 to 2014, Page played a crucial role in navigating the instability and eventual eruption of civil war in the country and providing foreign policy options for change.
In her time with the US government, she also held a number of other important roles, including attorney-adviser for Politico-Military Affairs in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, the United States Agency for International Development regional legal adviser in Kenya and Botswana covering East and Southern Africa, and political officer in Rwanda. She served as senior adviser to the special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan and deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs before her posting as ambassador. She has received several top State Department awards for her service, including the Sue M. Cobb Award for Exemplary Diplomatic Service; the Commendation for Outstanding Service to the Sudan Peace Process; and the Meritorious Honor Award for outstanding efforts in the promotion of the rule of law, human rights, and peace in the Great Lakes region of Africa.
Page played a major role in peace processes and international negotiations. In the early 2000s, she was a legal and political adviser to the Horn of Africa’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development Secretariat for Peace that mediated an end to Africa’s longest-running civil war. The peace agreement for Sudan led to a peaceful referendum for self-determination that created the new Republic of South Sudan in 2011. After the peace agreement was signed in 2005, Page created and led the Rule of Law and Corrections Advisory Unit at the UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan.
More recently, she held a series of high-ranking jobs in the UN. She served as deputy special representative of the UN Secretary-General responsible for the rule of law at the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, then as special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Justice Support in Haiti. In 2018, Secretary-General Guterres appointed her as his special adviser on rule of law under the Global Focal Point initiative. UN leaders later adopted her recommendations for restructuring the initiative.
Naana Frimpong
Naana is a partner at DLA Piper’s Atlanta office. She represents companies and executives navigating sensitive and often high-profile government investigations and related litigation and provides seasoned counsel to clients on the proactive adoption and refinement of compliance measures to meet an ever-changing global regulatory environment.
She is a former US federal prosecutor and trial lawyer with 20 years of experience conducting a broad array of investigations all over the world. She heads the firm's Atlanta litigation group and serves on the firm's Policy Committee. Her experience spans a range of industries, including pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, automotive manufacturing, nuclear power construction, government contracting, professional sports, and private equity and includes successfully resolving actions before a range of regulatory bodies. Her experience includes successfully resolving matters under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the False Claims act and general fraud. Although Naana's practice is global in its reach, she has a particular focus on Africa. She is co-chair of the firm's US-Africa Practice and is the US representative to the DLA Piper Africa Board.
During her tenure as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois (Chicago), she served as lead counsel on dozens of felony investigations and prosecutions, including various financial fraud schemes and transnational narcotics trafficking matters. She presented and obtained federal grand jury indictments, argued at numerous legal and evidentiary hearings, successfully tried several financial fraud jury and bench trials to verdict and briefed and successfully argued appeals before the US Courts of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Dr. Paul R. Williams
Dr. Paul R. Williams holds the Rebecca I. Grazier Professorship in Law and International Relations at American University where he teaches in the School of International Service and at the Washington College of Law. Dr. Williams is also the co-founder of the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), a pro bono law firm providing legal assistance to states and governments involved in peace negotiations, post-conflict constitution drafting, and the prosecution of war criminals. As a world renowned peace negotiation lawyer, Dr. Williams has assisted over two dozen parties in major international peace negotiations and has advised numerous parties on the drafting and implementation of post-conflict constitutions. Several of Dr. Williams' pro bono government clients throughout the world joined together to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Dr. Williams has served as a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as an Attorney-Adviser for European and Canadian affairs at the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Legal Adviser. He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. Dr. Williams is a sought-after international law and policy expert. He is frequently interviewed by major print and broadcast media and regularly contributes op-eds to major newspapers. Dr. Williams has authored six books on various topics concerning international law, and has published over three dozen scholarly articles on topics of international law and policy. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on a number of occasions relating to specific peace processes, transitional justice, and self-determination. Dr. Williams is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and has served as a Counsellor on the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. In 2019, Paul was awarded the Cox International Law Center's Humanitarian Award for Advancing Global Justice. More information about Dr. Williams can be found at www.drpaulrwilliams.com.
MODERATOR
Professor Darin Johnson
Darin Johnson is a Senior Legal Advisor at PILPG and a Professor of Law at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Over the past decade, Professor Johnson has conducted numerous capacity building trainings for PILPG clients around the world on topics of accountability and transitional justice. Professor Johnson served as Chief of Staff in the Office of the Special Coordinator for Middle East Transitions when it was newly formed, which was tasked with coordinating U.S. assistance to politically transitioning countries in the Middle East and North Africa following the Arab Spring uprisings. Prior, he served as the Legal Adviser to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. He received several Departmental honors for his work. Professor Johnson is an expert in public international law and transitional justice. He teaches courses in international criminal law and transitional justice and has published scholarly articles on international criminal accountability in Iraq, Syria, the Middle East, North Africa and sub Saharan Africa. He has trained PILPG program participants from Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, South Sudan, South Africa, The Gambia, Mali, Guinea, Rwanda and the Ivory Coast on international criminal accountability for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Professor Johnson received his B.A. from Yale College and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. Professor Johnson traveled frequently to South Sudan to assist with the Juba peace negotiations.
This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the legal responsibility of the Government of South Sudan and the African Union to establish the Hybrid Court for South Sudan (HCSS), in line with existing peace agreements, and offers policy recommendations for next steps to establish the hybrid court. The paper underlines that all stakeholders should build on this momentum created for accountability and justice for those affected by grave human rights violations during the conflict in South Sudan.