From 10-12 September 2024, the Wayamo Foundation hosted a second set of mentoring sessions in Nairobi, Kenya, for Sudanese civil society actors and lawyers. In fact, this Nairobi event was intended, planned and purpose-designed to be a way of building on the momentum generated by the initial intensive session held in Kampala, Uganda, in June 2024.
Wayamo has been working with this same network of actors since the current conflict erupted in Sudan in April 2023. The network is committed to undertaking documentation for the purposes of legal accountability. Since the outbreak of the armed conflict, Wayamo has invested a great deal of time and effort in holding training sessions on topics ranging from international criminal law and open-source investigations to the application of universal jurisdiction for international crimes.
The new mentoring model was developed in response to a request from network members to have more individual one-on-one time with Wayamo’s experts, in order to present the documentation work that they had done to date, and receive feedback and counselling on the next steps to be taken in their respective investigations and case building.
Wayamo assembled a panel of experts with a wide-ranging experience of international criminal investigations, international humanitarian law, sexual and gender-based violence, strategic litigation, and international prosecution and defence, to provide Sudanese lawyers with the calibre of in-depth guidance needed to proceed with their investigative work.
The expert team consisted of Wayamo staff, representatives of Legal Action Worldwide and the Clooney Foundation, an expert in investigating conflict-related sexual violence and an experienced defence counsel in international crimes cases.
The second edition of the mentorship workshop was widely viewed as a success. Indeed, participants deeply appreciated the practical, in-depth review of and guidance on their work given by the panel of experts. In the words of one of the participants, “The interaction with the experts was excellent. They provided detailed and very useful feedback, which allowed us to identify gaps in our work during the meeting and determine what actions are needed to address them.”
As a direct follow-up to the participants’ requests at the first mentoring sessions in June 2024, Wayamo and its experts presented context-specific templates and examples of how to take screening notes (rather than full witness statements), as well as templates for medical reports to be completed by first responders for sexual and gender-based violence.
In the written evaluation of our sessions, one of the participants had this to say about the templates that were shared with them, “They will be a transformative point to our organisation and to our partners in the documentation processes.”
Another participant felt that the mentorship sessions were “perfect”, in that they provided a safe space to discuss confidential information, as well as space to be vulnerable for learning. “The feedback was constructive and useable; it was also targeted and specific and actually the best part of recent training I’ve participated in.”
The aim behind the mentoring sessions is to take participants one step closer to the goal of building near-complete case files that can, inter alia, be handed over to prosecuting authorities, whether in the shape of the ICC, Sudanese courts (eventually), or universal jurisdiction venues across the East African region.
