By Bosco Bush
Civil society organizations in Yei River County are calling for a conducive environment for civic engagement to better connect with the community.
This call was made during the installation of the newly appointed Commissioner of Yei River County, held on Tuesday at Yei Freedom Square.
Mr. Modi Archangelo, chairperson of the Yei Civil Society Organizations, urged the new commissioner to foster a civic space that enables civil society members to effectively reach and educate grassroots communities.
“As civil society, we ask not for many things but only to open for us the civic space so that we can be able to reach down to the civil population and we can be able to educate them,” he appealed.
Archangelo noted that most of their activities have been exhausted within Yei town compared to its outskirts due to some security censorship that made it difficult for them to penetrate inside the rural areas to engage with the ordinary people.
“We have not reached the grassroots because our corridors are closed. We don’t have space to reach, and when we reach we are suspected to be collaborators of rebels,” he added.
“Open for us the corridors and we shall work with you together,” he stressed.
Restoring peace is a collective responsibility of every citizen, Archangelo emphasized collaborative and collegial work between the authorities and the people for peace to prevail in Yei River County.
“As much as we need peace, we need to collaborate together and work together to bring this peace. One person cannot work it alone,” he said, urging the commissioner to ‘trust, believe and love the people’ in order to achieve sustainable peace in Yei.
Yei River County is one of the areas that has been wrecked by the 2016 conflict that left most of its residents displaced as refugees to the neighbouring countries.
With the signing and implementation of the 2018 revitalized peace agreement, relatively calm has returned to the area.
However, some security insurgencies have been reported in the outskirts of the town following abductions of civilians allegedly perpetrated by members of the National Salvation Front (NAS) in the area.