I come from a human rights background, where monitoring human rights violations is absolutely key to any attempt to fight against impunity. The DPKO mission, the peacekeeping operation in South Sudan, has a large component of human rights monitoring. There is a large team to protect civilian officials. They are gathering on a daily basis the violations which are occurring by all parties to the conflict through testimonies they collect from the victims inside South Sudan. Of course, it's much easier to do it outside, and that's what we do always, looking to the refugees to tell us their stories, because they're not at risk of reprisals. We can entirely protect them, and they feel much more confident about volunteering the information.
The problem is what's next. Those reports go up the chain within the United Nations on a weekly or monthly basis, and will go to the General Assembly, eventually. To some extent they are also sent to the Security Council. The problem is moving it one step forward, and saying what kind of action will be taken so those responsible are held accountable, and eventually punished for those atrocities.
For a long time, Canada has been, and still is, one of the most vocal advocates for international criminal justice and for the ICC tribunal. It's complicated in the context of South Sudan, because of the political sensitivities or ramifications that we are all aware of. The documentation of the human rights violations is key. We have seen that in other parts of the world. It can take 10 or 15 years, but it stills helps at some point. Let's not forget that impunity is not only about punishing the perpetrator; it's also recognizing the victim as a victim.
This is absolutely key in rebuilding a society. That's the whole concept of transitional justice, of making sure that there is an acknowledgement, a historical record of the violations which have happened in a country. The only way the South African society is trying to stay together, or the Argentinian one, is through truth telling, record telling, eventually accountability, but also a recognition that what you did was not wrong, that you were just a victim of a regime, an armed group, and so on. We must continue to monitor, but we have to look at it in a longer time frame.