Sudan lawyers: Juba Peace Agreement amendment ‘illegal’

Yesterday, lawyers criticized the way the Juba Peace Agreement was included in the Constitutional Document, explaining that the document required approval from two-thirds of the members of the Legislative Council for it to be amended.

Human rights lawyer, Nabil Adib, said that “the inclusion of the Juba Peace Agreement was not done in accordance with the provisions of the Constitutional Document” during a workshop on the Constitutional Document organized by the Sudan Institute for Democracy at El Salam Rotana Hotel in Khartoum. He stressed that his objection is not against the newly formed Transitional Partners Council, but against the inclusion of the Juba Peace Agreement, signed on October 3, into the document.

Similarly, the head of the Steering Committee of the Sudanese Bar Association, Ali Giloub, described the amendment of the Constitutional Document as illegal because it did not fulfil the two-thirds requirement from the members of the council.

However, Shamseldin Douelbait, a member of the government delegation in the Juba negotiations, described the objection to the inclusion of the peace agreement in the Constitutional Document as adhering excessively to recognized forms. He said that the objection does not adhere to the spirit of the document, and that it has caused a major rift between revolutionary forces and other periphery groups.

He explained that “the objection has been wrongly interpreted as opposition to the peace agreement itself, which has therefore affected the peace process as a whole, even impacting on non-signatory movements.”

He strongly criticized any constitutional reasoning to stop the implementation of peace. He said that the document came as a result of political settlements such as the Naivasha Agreement, and that there is no preference for the Constitutional Document over the peace agreement.

In October, civil society organisations warned against the incorporation of the Juba Peace Agreement into the Constitutional Document, because not all of the armed rebel movements have signed a peace accord with the Sudanese government.

One week later, the Sovereign Council and the Council of Ministers decided to incorporate the Juba Peace Agreement into the 2019 Constitutional Document.

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