The Director General with State Ministry of Gender, Child and Social welfare in Eastern
Equatoria has called on non-governmental organisations, UN agencies and the
government institutions to engage both men and women at work places to promote
gender parity.
Dominica Idwa Vitale made this statement during the opening of a three days gender in
humanitarian action or GIHA for humanitarian actors organised by the ministry of
humanitarian affairs and disaster management with funding from federal republic of
Germany and UN women in collaboration with women initiative for humanitarian
development organization (WIHDO) in Torit on Tuesday.
Over 40 members of women led organisations are attending the training aimed at
creating gender understanding, familiarize humanitarian personnel with available tools
to assist them in gender equality programs and developing knowledge and skills in
gender analysis and gender mainstreaming.
When we are looking at the employment we need to look at both men and women
should be employed and also benefit, the recruitment should also favor women not only
men , when we talk of gender it is not only women it means men and women, boys and
girls , you are coming from national and you see this actors here, do we look at this
local actors, what are they supposed to do, Do WFP go down or they are supposed to
give funding to this local NGOs so that they go down to the community to address
issues”, the Official told the gathering
The Executive Director for women initiative for humanitarian development (WIHDO)
cited forms of gender-based violence in the state that are not in other parts of the
country.
The female activist said girl child compensation as a practice, she emphasised funds as
main hindrance to sensitisation of community members at the grass roots to stop the
vice.
“In terms of issues, we have girl child compensation, early and force marriage and
violence against women mostly in Eastern Equatoria state we have different types of
GBV compared to other states like child compensation only happens here. we are really
working but the problem is just lack of funding to implement the work up to the
grassroots we are lacking funding so we need UN women to support women led
organisations especially in Eastern Equatoria to deliver their work at grassroots level “,
said the activist
The Gender and Humanitarian Specialist at UN women in South Sudan; Elizabeth
Awate cautioned humanitarian actors on ways of conducting gender mainstreaming and
analysis when conducting gender needs to be addressed for the betterment of the entire
population in the community.
She encouraged addressing needs of the suffering population to positively impact
people in the community.
“How are we going to mainstream gender in the humanitarian work we have been
talking about development work for a very long time but how do we mainstream, how do
we do gender analysis when we are conducting needs assessment, how do we ensure
that the needs of women, men, girls and boys are taken care of, we are trying to do
much but we need to do more so that we ensure that during disasters, conflicts then this
issue sure taken into consideration”, Awate said
“Most people believe that humanitarian is quick, there is no need to talk about gender
but its not true we need to make sure that we find out how many people are affected,
what are the needs, how do we address and how are we going to impact on their lives
and how are they going to benefit from the way we are doing our work”, she said
The director for planning, training and gender focal point at the national ministry of
humanitarian affairs James Bol Reech says the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs takes
lead in gender mainstreaming and disaster management
As the ministry of humanitarian affairs ,we take a lead in mainstreaming gender and
disaster ,gender is a cross cutting issues as well as disaster so our main overall is we
have to take policies on how we prepare ourselves as South Sudanese in the state or
the national, bomas or payams on how we respond and mitigate because people are
mostly affected during disaster and women, children boys and girls including even men
with disability we are trying to empower women who are resilient to disaster , if we have
women networking in Eastern Equatoria, they will help