DEVELOPMENT-SUDAN: Donors Urged to Tie Aid to Gender Equality

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Apr 11 2005 (IPS) - When this week’s international donors conference on Sudan winds up in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, the long-neglected women of South Sudan hope substantial funding would be allocated to empower them after a 21-year civil war.

When this week’s international donors conference on Sudan winds up in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, the long-neglected women of South Sudan hope a substantial funding would be allocated to empower them after a 21-year civil war.

The two-day gathering, which kicked off in Oslo Apr. 11, is seeking to raise 7.8 billion dollars over the next two and a half years for the reconstruction of South Sudan following the signing of a peace agreement in January.

‘’If we got at least two billion of that amount, it would help to cater for matters affecting women. Women issues are many, especially in Southern Sudan, which has been badly devastated by war. We have to deal with issue of education, which is most important. Others are sanitation, health and infrastructure,” Anisia Achieng, chairperson of the Sudan Women’s Voice for Peace, told IPS last week.

She was attending a meeting in Kenya’s capital Nairobi where women from southern Sudan were plotting a common strategy on priority areas they want the Oslo conference to focus on. The forum, organised by the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM), brought together some 40 women activists who later travelled to Oslo.

The Oslo gathering comes in the wake of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in Kenya in January. The agreement aims to end the conflict between the Arab-dominated Islamic regime in Khartoum and the mainly Christian rebels in the south. The conflict, which erupted in 1983, has claimed more than two million lives, and displaced more than four million people.

According to Betty Achan Oguaro, programme director of Windows for Sudan, an organisation that deals with education issues, the literacy level for women in South Sudan is about 0.1 to 0.2 percent.

Worse still, the enrolment rate of girls in school remains poor compared to boys, Oguaro said.

Sudan government places southern Sudan among regions with the lowest enrolment rates, while the higher levels of enrolment are found in the more prosperous regions of the north, which has not been directly affected by the conflict in the south.

Government’s 2002/2003 statistics show that the ratio in enrolment between girls and boys was 62.7 to 71.3. The girls have been dropping out for reasons ranging from involvement in house chores to lack of school fees.

‘’Without education, women and girls cannot go far. The government must, therefore, take this issue seriously. We need boarding schools to re-open. In boarding schools, girls were allowed to stay in school, and not concentrate on domestic chores. This gave them space to compete equally with boys,” she said.

Uguaro urged the Sudanese government to introduce adult education. ‘’Adult education must be introduced so that women become educated. For girls, who are past education age, it is important to include informal education whereby they will be equipped with other skills,” Uguaro said. ‘’When women can read and write; they can take a lead in health issues like HIV/AIDS, which is spreading faster. This can be stopped by arming women and girls with the necessary information to fight the disease.”

Health campaigners contend that women and girls are more prone to HIV/AIDS, particularly when targeted by gender-based violence during conflict, than boys. The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in Sudan is around 2.3 percent, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). But civil society groups say the figure could be higher due to the number of refugees who have begun returning home from neighbouring countries.

Women activists say gender equality can be addressed effectively only if women participate in decision-making process. ‘’This is the reason we need to lobby the donors in Oslo to peg their funds on condition that Sudan respects its constitutions especially on issues relating to the number of women in key positions,” Kezia Layinwa Nicodemus, who is in charge of Women, Gender and Child Welfare in South Sudan, said.

Under the peace agreement, Sudan will have two constitutions; one in the south and the other in Khartoum. Under its constitution, the SPLM/A, which will form the government of South Sudan, requires a 25-percent women representation in the movement’s leadership council. Today, only 10 percent are women.

‘’Women leadership must be taken seriously. We need the 25 percent to be women. The number can also be increased to 30 percent to ensure good governance,” Nicodemus argued.

The women’s views have been endorsed by the United Nations. ‘’We call on SPLM/A and Khartoum to make sure that women are included in the important institutions as stipulated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement,” Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda, UNIFEM’s regional director for East and Horn of Africa, told the Nairobi gathering.

In Oslo, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan Monday appealed to the representatives of the 60 countries attending the conference to make available one billion dollars immediately to kick-start reconstruction in South Sudan.