* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
South Sudan will become an independent nation on July 9th of this year.
Groundwork for this referendum was laid in back 2005 during the Naivasha Peace Agreement that ended 22 years of civil war. The war left more than 2 million dead and another 4 million displaced. Many women were raped and infected with HIV/AIDS during the conflict. Nevertheless, women worked across lines of regional, religious, ethnic and language differences to instigate and shape the peace process.
The Sudanese women’s movement dates back to anti-colonial struggles of the 1940s when women were instrumental in Sudan’s independence from Egypt and the United Kingdom.
Now, with a formation of a new government and the drafting of South Sudan’s constitution, there is an opportunity for women’s rights -– to advance or regress.
An interim constitution, governing the new nation in the period between now and July stipulates that women must constitute 25% of the representatives in legislative and executive bodies. It also mandates equal pay for equal work, women’s property and inheritance rights, prohibition of harmful practices that constitute violence against women and medical care for pregnant women.
But these stipulations may prove difficult to implement given the circumstances women face.
At 65%, women form the majority of 8 million people in South Sudan. But they also are the worst off. 92% cannot read or write. More than 70% aged 15-49 have no knowledge of HIV prevention. One out of seven who become pregnant will likely die from pregnancy-related causes. Domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence are common.
Women also face the legacy of more than two decades of Sharia Law which regulated dress and mobility, controlled sexuality, sanctioned practices such as female genital mutilation as manifestation of Islamic culture and positioned issues of HIV/AIDS and reproductive rights as private matters not in need of public policies or provisions.
According to Fahima Hashim of the Salmmah Women Resource Center in Khartoum, women in the north and south have long been battling such laws, discrimination and attitudes – knowing full well that the country’s separation does not rid either part of patriarchy. It is not yet clear whether and how Sharia will take root in the new country but as Hashim points out, “men in power have a stake in maintaining control over women and their bodies” and women see this moment as an opening.
In addition to looking inward and sifting and sorting through what to carry over and what to change, South Sudan’s leadership will also contend with global geopolitics.
Tribes within the country vie for control of the vast, economically-promising oil reserves and water sources, which have also sparked widespread international interest in the wake of the ongoing energy crisis. Will corporations and other countries such as China, France and Russia deepen their engagement in pursuit of oil and water? How much autonomy will the new government actually have? And what will this mean for human rights and women’s rights?
Manal Allagabo, the Sudan Coordinator of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa Network has identified a number of strategies that women’s groups can employ to make sure that women’s rights are prioritized in the new state.
Among them:
- Organizing into community-based associations to strengthen their engagement
- Dissemination of information about why and how to participate in governance processes
- Making use of international conventions such as CEDAW to provide language for the constitution
- Engagement of advocacy processes around violence against women, HIV/AIDS and women’s health
- Use of increased freedom of expression in print and mass media to disseminate information on women’s rights and encourage women’s involvement in public affairs
Informal education, street theatre and political and legislative training efforts are already underway, and Allagabo points to the cases of Liberia and Rwanda - where women organized and implemented multiple strategies to push for post-conflict reform - as models.
Regardless of strategies employed, Hashim points out that transnational organizing of women will be key to pushing for women’s rights.
Although Sudan has “divorced,” women in both the north and south – and women worldwide – are more interested in the universal realization of rights than the fissures of “irreconcilable differences.”
Lydia Alpízar Durán with contributions from Masum Momaya
