South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Awan Achiek
Over 50 lawmakers from the Translational Legislative Assembly of Central Equatoria State on Saturday completed four-days training on conflict resolution in Juba.
The training workshop was organized by the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative in partnership with the Central Equatoria State Ministry of Peace Building.
Bush Buse, Project Coordinator for Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative said the training workshop, aimed at equipping the legislators with skills and knowledge to promote peace, good governance and conflict mitigation skills.
“If you look at Central Equatoria State, it is faced with a lot security issues, you know when we talk about peace we talk about security. There are a lot of conflict related issues of land grabbing, and land grabbing has been coming up and this has become a national security threat,” Buse told journalists.
He said the training has impacted MPs with skills to address issues of land grabbing and other security related issues.
“Land grabbing has become a threat to our unity as South Sudanese and these things are happening in Central Equatoria State, so we have called the lawmakers so that they will be able to have skills and tools to analyze conflict,”Buse said.
James Wani, Director General of Central Equatoria State Ministry of Peacebuilding said the workshop equipped lawmakers with tools to be peace makers.
“They were able to identify some conflicts within Central Equatoria State and the issue of land grabbing was the first thing,” Wani said.
He said the training equipped the MPs with skills on conflict negotiation, mediation and good governance.
“When we came to the issues of negotiation and mediation, most of them were equipped through this training and they felt that when they are going from here, they will make good use of them within their constituencies,” Wani said.
Marka Mustafa, the Chairperson for Specialized Committee for Legislature and Legal Affairs, said the skills they learned will help them to perform better in the parliament.
“It has strengthened the MPs of Central Equatoria State especially on their roles and how to legislate in the parliament,” she said.