Lena Ellen Becker, a German justice advisor with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), treats women's rights as central to sustainable peacebuilding.  

In the town of Lietnhom, South Sudan, a young woman steps free after months in detention for refusing her family's demand for a forced marriage. Cases like these reveal how individual rights violations can become flashpoints for wider communal tensions in the country.

To help address them, Ms. Becker's strategy begins with mobile circuit courts that tackle grave issues like rape and murder, crimes that, when left unresolved, create cycles of revenge between individuals and communities.

The mobile courts break these cycles by providing legitimate resolution pathways, evidenced by increased police reporting and community requests for return visits.  

Mobile courts also point to the limits of customary practices. While providing accessible community mediation, male-dominated traditional courts, drawing on community consensus rather than legal standards, frequently overlook victim rights in serious crimes while reinforcing patriarchal norms that trap women in cycles of vulnerability. 

In Warrap State, this insight guides Lena’s consultations with over 300 locals, authorities, and leaders on reform of the customary law, which dates from 1975, strategically centering women's voices because their exclusion from traditional justice creates the conflicts mobile courts are later called to resolve.  

The review tackles root causes of conflict: establishing that marriage requires consent from the adult bride and groom rather than by their families, directly addresses cases like the detained young woman in Lietnhom.

These accords also indirectly pressure the bride price system in which some families treat daughters as commodities, with average bride prices exceeding $20,000 equivalent in cattle, costs that push young men toward cattle raids or abductions of girls, which spark the inter-communal violence that requires adjudication by mobile courts. 

Mobile courts provide immediate relief; customary law reform addresses root causes while respecting community ownership of solutions. The result is a structural change that prevents future conflicts.  

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