South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Okech Francis
To ensure effective fight towards elimination of Gender Based Violence, the government must ensure funding through an allocation of a spending plan, the Minister of Interior, Angelina Teny said.
Teny said gender-based violence hinders society’s efforts to unlock the full potentials of women and girls especially.
“Violence against women is a societal issue requiring involvement of all stakeholders,” she said in Juba on Thursday.
South Sudan is commemorating the 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence, an annual international campaign held to defy violence against all women and girls and runs from November 25 to December 10.
Teny acknowledged the important role customary courts play in resolving family cases in communities within the country.
“There is need to strengthen laws that protect our women and girls from violence,” she said.
Violence against women and girls in South Sudan remains an endemic problem inhibiting the full participation of women in decision making at the community, economy and the society in general.
The acting Undersecretary in the Gender, Child and Social Welfare ministry, Joseph Loro said a lot has been done about policies and awareness raising on gender-based violence in the country.
“A multi-sectorial approach is needed to tackle gender-based violence challenges,” he explained, while calling for the expeditious enactment of the anti-gender based violence and family laws.
Violence disproportionately affects women living in low and lower middle-income countries.
An estimated 37 percent of women living in the poorest countries have experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence in their life, with some of these countries having a prevalence as high as 1 in 2, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Country Director, Ademola Olajide said.
“We cannot make sustainable economic progress if we cannot ably address gender-based violence in societies. There is thus need to change norms that underestimate our women and girls,” he said.
The South Sudan Law Society, one of the organizers of the event this year, called on the Revitalized Transitional National Legislative Assembly (R-TNLA) to leverage the 16 Days of Activism as an opportunity to expedite the enactment of the anti-Gender Based Violence (GBV) Bill, Family Bill and Women Enterprise Development Fund.
“We are therefore calling upon the media, all stakeholders and the general public to participate in the campaign and invest to support the advancement of women rights,” SSLS said in a statement.
This year’s campaign under the theme, “Unite! Invest to prevent violence against women and girls” calls for global action to focus on financing different prevention strategies to stop violence from occurring.
A study conducted by South Sudan Law Society (SSLS) and Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) says up to 90 percent of gender-based violence cases are heard in customary courts presided by older male judges with deeply ingrained patriarchal views, which generally condone domestic violence.
South Sudan, the 2018 study revealed, accounts for the second highest prevalence case of GBV in the region. A substantial proportion of its women (aged 15-64), it observed, experience gender-based violence either in the form of physical (34.0 percent) or sexual (13.5 percent) violence in their lifetime.