Women Day should invite reflection on empowering the girl child

South Sudan joined the rest of the world on March 8, 2024 to celebrate International Women’s Day.

This noble day invites the government and all South Sudanese to reflect on the state of the girl child and women in the country.

Women and girls have borne the brunt of the brutal years of conflict since December 2013. Several UN reports have detailed sexual –related violence such as rape over the years.

In addition, women lag behind in terms of social-economic empowerment, and this calls for government to invest in skilling women and girls in order to make them compete with their male counterparts.

The saying goes that to educate a girl is to educate a nation, and this is what the transitional unity government needs to do.

Several households in the country are women led due to either the loss of the family heads because of war or displacement from conflict. Most of these women are doing small-scale businesses in various markets in the country and they require capital to sustain their businesses.

The government could facilitate establishment of micro-finance institutions to provide soft loans to small business owners.