Gender

Despite high rates of violence against women and girls in conflict and humanitarian contexts, many survivors do not tell anyone about their experience or seek help from support services (e.g. health, legal, psychosocial support, police).

This paper examines disclosure and help seeking behaviours of survivors of non-partner sexual violence (NPSV) and intimate partner violence (IPV) among women and girls aged 15–64 from three sites in South Sudan. It seeks to understand how exposure to armed conflict is associated with disclosure and help seeking practices.

For NPSV, respondents for whom an incident of sexual violence occurred during conflict had twice the odds of telling someone about their experience (aOR: 2.2; 95%CI: 1.3–3.7; p < 0.01) and three times the odds of seeking help (aOR: 3.1; 95%CI: 1.7–5.9, p < .001), compared to respondents for whom the incident of violence did not occur during conflict. Age, the identity of the perpetrator, working status of the woman, poverty and location also affected disclosure and help seeking behaviours for survivors of NPSV. For IPV, exposure to conflict increased the odds a respondent would tell someone about her experience (aOR 1.7; 95%CI 1.2–2.5; p < .01), but was not associated with seeking support services. The severity of IPV affected both disclosure and help seeking behaviours, with the odds of disclosing IPV increasing if the respondent experienced both physical and sexual IPV (compared to only sexual violence), had been injured, thought their well-being was affected, was afraid of their partner, or was controlled by their partner. However, not all these factors were subsequently associated with help seeking behaviours for survivors of IPV and respondents who reported they were sometimes afraid of their partner had reduced odds of seeking help, compared to those who were never afraid of their partners.

These findings are important as, prior to this analysis, it was unclear how experiencing conflict-related VAWG would influence disclosure and help seeking. Given the findings of this paper, it is important that the international community consider how to reduce barriers to reporting and help seeking for non-conflict-related forms of violence in these settings.

South Sudan is a country with already pre-existing inequalities, gender norms and perceptions of who a man and woman is. The experiences of women and girls in South Sudan are starkly different to that of men and boys and the civil war, poverty and societal norms in the country has put women and girls at a disadvantage to seek out a livelihood, good healthcare, education etc. than their male counterparts.
The COVID-19 outbreak in South Sudan has struck an already vulnerable country with pre-existing differences and has further exacerbated these differences between women, men, girls and boys. For example, women and girls who make up the majority of frontline health workers, carers at home, community volunteers and mobilisers stand to be overwhelmed with more health and domestic responsibilities with the advent of COVID-19.
The restrictions on movement places a higher risk on women to experience Gender Based Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, because women are confined in their homes or camps with abusers. Therefore it is
imperative that the national response plan on COVID-19 is grounded in a strong knowledge of gender dynamics, gender relations, sex and age disaggregated data that takes into account the differing experiences of all vulnerable groups (IDP’s women and children, disabled women, women and children in refugee camps), the gendered roles, needs, responsibilities and dynamics.
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, Ministry of Gender, Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Community Empowerment for Progress (CEPO) and Rural Women for Development South Sudan (RWDSS) conducted a rapid gender analysis to find out how COVID-19 affects Women, Men, Girls and Boys and to identify their different needs which seek out a more informed gender response.
The rapid gender analysis found out that there were challenges based on gender differences in how W, M, G and B’s experienced the restrictions imposed by the Government of South Sudan to prevent the spread of COVID-19, in how they accessed information, in how labor was divided in households, in how they received support to address GBV, in how they accessed an already strained healthcare system, in how they accessed WASH facilities and in how they were affected by a decrease in livelihood activities etc. The rapid gender analysis has also incorporated pre-existing data from secondary sources to inform the change that COVID-19 has brought onto communities in South Sudan.

Climate change poses global risks. These risks adversely affect women in developing countries because of their little capacity to adapt. Previous studies show that women are more vulnerable to climate change than men for a variety of reasons, including illiteracy, low socioeconomic skills, inadequate access to assets, and social isolation, among others. Thus, if empowered, women can contribute significantly to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Limited understanding exists on climate change gender impact disparity in South Sudan. Using literature and empirical data, we find that in South Sudan: Women are at the lower rung of social hierarchy, which produces imbalances that highly expose them to climate change disasters; Women have less resilience assets, rely more on natural resources, have high rate of illiteracy, low skills and low access to professional employment, which make them more vulnerable to climate change calamities than men, and Households headed by females are more vulnerable to disasters such as famine.

This report examines child and forced marriage in South Sudan. The report suggests that child marriage has a significant negative impact on women and girl’s realization of key human rights, including their rights to health and education, physical integrity and the right to marry only when they are able and willing to give their free consent.

This brief provides a context update about the current situation in Northern Bahr el Ghazal –a county in northern South Sudan.

The authors present safety and security challenges identified by communities, authorities and civil society such as food insecurity, gender-based violence, land and border disputes, weak justice systems and a lack of security services to turn to.

They also provide recommendations for how best to address these challenges for all levels of government and communities to consider.

The paper examined the essence of women in Mainstreaming Peace and Security in South Sudan by exploring lessons Learned and Way forward. The study has assessed some instruments used in support of UN Resolution 1325 to empower women in promoting peace and security within the country. The paper has examined UNSCR 1325 by understanding the essence of women participation, the execution of the resolution by developing the policy framework, and understanding the avenues applied by women to participate in peace and security in South Sudan. The paper has found out that, R–ARCSS is a great opportunity South Sudan’s gender mainstreaming by complying with UN resolution 1325. The purpose of this study was to articulate the desired end state of Women in Mainstreaming Peace and Security in South Sudan: Lessons Learnt and way forward to serve as a platform for discussions at the highest level of decision–making and to provide a guide for further detailed planning in achieving gender mainstreaming within South Sudan.