Radio Miraya
2654: International Women's Day: The European Union Support for South Sudan Women Researchers
This week, it is more about women for us and we are spotlighting diverse women in South Sudan. At the end of this week on Friday, March the 8th will be commemorating the International Women's Day. International Women's Day makes a call to action towards women's equality and on the day, will celebrate women's achievements. Well, think about the women in your society, the teachers, police women, doctors, musicians, business women, including all the women who keep our communities healthy, safe, educated and progressing. All this week, we'll be focusing on women who produce knowledge in South Sudan and the women are part of South Sudan women researchers network that is facilitated by the Rift Valley Institute supported by the European Union. And to help us understand the importance of women who play the important role of researching about our communities, we have our guests from the European Union delegation in South Sudan, we have Lottar Yaki is the head of the political section and Naomi Sorkal, he's the program manager, had the European Union. Good morning. I hope I had the pronunciations right if I did it, please correct me. Welcome to the program. Good morning. Right. So the European Union delegation is supporting South Sudanese who are working towards achieving women's equality. Just help us understand how you are involved in the women researchers network. Good morning to our listeners also from our side. My name is Naomi Sorkal. I'm the program officer for Human Rights and Civil Society at the EU delegation in Juba. So from the delegation side, I'm the focal point for this nice project in the Rift Valley Institute. And I have been following their work in the past two years already. Right. So it's been quite interesting. Right. Yes, Lottar. Yes. Hello, everybody. Hello listeners. My name is Lottar Yaki. We are very proud to be here. Today, it is for us the start of the campaign of the International Women's Day, which has a long history. And this year, the theme is Inspire Inclusion. And it's actually through all the history of this day empowerment and inclusion of women is a huge issue, a huge thing started with the rights to vote. Yes. And today we are here to talk a little bit about our project with the Rift Valley Institute. We are very proud to be a partner of the Institute. It's a valuable partner for us in advancing knowledge of South Sudan and better understand the local realities to bear on social and political actions. This is a very important overall for the bigger picture in contributing to a successful transition towards a stable, democratic and peaceful South Sudan as the process should be led by South Sudan and owned by South Sudan. Right. This also goes for the research but we will talk about it later. Right. Right. So Naomi, why is it important for women to be involved in work that generates local knowledge? Well, so this week it's a nice opportunity to reflect on also on the history of women's rights movement and the history of women's day. So it goes back for over a century in the history. It's been now more than 100 years that we are commemorating women's day and there have been significant evidence over even more than 100 years that women's movements have made quite significant achievements in the political sphere in the economic part of the society. So if you think about the Sufrajat movement back in the US, back in European countries, it started with movements to advance the right to vote but then it became a whole lot more than that. Then it became about economic equality, about equality in the society and there is evidence which is also important for South Sudan that in these processes, women's involvement normally contributes to more of a sustained peace because they don't focus on this point so far. They create structures that will lead to lasting peace and that's why it's very important to talk about empowerment and inclusion, not just about the right to vote, not just about equal pay for equal positions but about equal involvement in all decision-making processes. Thank you so much, Nomi. Yes, Lota, just bring us a little bit about the research that you wanted to speak about. Yes, it's a women research network that's the project what the project is about and many asked himself why female research is also male research but actually that is the point that there are even two points. One is the gender equality because women research is not that much supported one point and the other point is that by including women's perspective, we will improve the quality of the research. Yes, Nomi, how else is the European Union supporting women's empowerment in South Sudan? You may know that this is one of our key priorities. It's something that we also tackle holistically. Globally, the EU stands for a global commitment that by the end of 2025, which is very soon, 85% of all our external actions will contribute to gender equality. So it is something that we tackle holistically. It means that in each of our intervention, made it be the field of agriculture, development, green economy, health and education, whatever project we support, we have to look at how that contributes to gender equality. And besides that, we also have targeted support for social and economic empowerment of women for supporting access to justice and to fight against sexual and gender-based violence. Right. Now, as the world commemorates the International Women's Day this year, what are the delegations priorities on supporting women going forward for this year and the near future? Yes, well, that's exactly what Nomi pointed out as well. The programs that we have, the Gender Action Plan, we have a new program coming up together with the German Ministry of Development on sexual and gender-based violence. And then we support also in the run-up to the elections, a project called Raising Boys, participate. And this focuses on strengthening civil society, their outreach for public education, for voters education, with a special focus on women and youth. Right. And of course, very, very proud about this project because I think it's very innovative and it strengthens the capacities to do research and particular female research. Right. Well, as we conclude this, what is your message to the South Sudanese on the importance of walking towards the women's equality? Is that within your, Nomi? I think what is important is to reflect on how it's really beneficial to everybody in the society that because sometimes, you know, gender equality and advocacy around it is perceived as a kind of, you know, an external agenda. But I think it's important to reflect how it's beneficial to each and every family, to each and every community and to the society in general. Yes, Lota. Very simple. I think you can put it in one phrase, gender equality makes better societies. It is totally necessary as civil society is necessary for a strong country. But I would let me just say one more thing because the South Sudanese research is one, the one big idea behind it is that a lot of research that we know about South Sudan is driven from outside by externally determined policy agendas that nothing about the research is very good, but it's driven from outside. So together with Rift Valley Institute, we thought it's very important to put emphasis on the need on local needs for local communities that operate in the local context. And I think South Sudanese researchers understand better South Sudanese problems. That's also a little bit the idea behind this. Right, Lota, Yaki? Yaki? It's not easy. It's not easy. Yeah, Lota, Yaki, and Loma is so cool. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. And yes, Yaki is ahead of political section, and Loma is the program manager at the European Union. [BLANK_AUDIO]