Human Rights Watch urges Kiir to reject controversial NSS bill

JUBA – Human Rights Watch on Thursday called on South Sudanese President Salva Kiir to reject a controversial bill that grants sweeping powers to the National Security Service (NSS).

South Sudan’s transitional parliament on Wednesday passed the National Security Act 2014 (Amendment Bill 2024), retaining sections that allow the NSS to arrest and detain individuals without warrants. The provisions, previously in sections 54 and 55, have been moved to section 57.

The bill now awaits President Kiir’s signature. If Kiir neither signs nor returns the bill to parliament within 30 days, it will automatically become law.

“Instead of reining in the security service, which has been the government’s preferred tool of repression, South Sudan’s parliament has further emboldened the agency,” said Laetitia Bader, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

“This was an opportunity to promote and enhance justice and human rights, but instead, parliament chose to strengthen a security service that routinely abuses rights with impunity,” she added.

She called on Kiir to reject the law and send it back to parliament where the sections should be removed.

“President Kiir should reject the broad powers of arrest and detention and send the law back to parliament so they can bring it in line with the constitution and international human rights standards,” Bader said.

“This could go a long way to curtail abuses by the security service and contribute to a rights-respecting South Sudan,” Bader concluded.