South Sudan parliament passes NSS bill retaining controversial sections

JUBA – South Sudan’s parliament, dominated by the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) party of President Salva Kiir, with 332 members, approved an amended National Security Service Act on Wednesday, retaining controversial articles that empower the NSS to detain suspects without warrants.

The vote followed a heated debate, with the opposition parties, including the SPLM-IO, which has 128 members, and SSOA, which has 50 members, advocating for the removal of articles 54 and 55.

These articles grant the NSS broad powers, including arrest, detention, communication monitoring, and search and seizure, all without judicial warrants.

“And as such, 388 members, sorry, 391 honorable members attended the sitting. And since there was no consensus among them over this bill and especially section 54 and 55, the house decided to exercise their democratic right. And in the voting, 274 members were in favor and 114 against with three abstentions,” Oliver Mori Benjamin, parliament’s spokesperson, told journalists after an ordinary session on Wednesday.

Some lawmakers argued that President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar had previously agreed to remove these warrantless arrest provisions.

“Actually, that’s not the president, but the main stakeholders, the main principles of the agreement. Some members brought it up that they had agreed to remove this, some of these two articles, 54 and 55,” Benjamin said.

“But it was debated, and no substantive evidence was presented to the house to show that the two, that is to say the president and his vice president, as alleged by some members, have agreed to remove it,” Benjamin said.

The February 2023 agreement between Kiir and Machar referenced by lawmakers aimed to address concerns about the NSS’s extensive powers. The current legislation, the National Security Service Act 2014 (Amendment Bill 2024), has been criticized for granting security forces unchecked authority.

The passage of the amended bill with the contested articles maintains the status quo, allowing the NSS to operate without judicial oversight in certain situations. The President now has 30 days to sign the bill into law.