By Taban Henry
The women parliamentary caucus has demanded the government to stand firm in supporting plans of implementation for good solidarity among women in the country.
This came on Thursday during the inauguration ceremony of the new members of parliament who were women nominated candidates from the three greater regions of the country, Greater Bahr el Ghazal, Equatoria and Upper Nile, to form the National Women Parliamentary Caucus.
The caucus is a multiparty platform of women parliamentarians, from both the Upper and the Lower houses of the National Legislature, established in 2018, to ensure gender responsive laws, political processes and equality in the resource allocation, to improve the quality of life for South Sudanese women and girls.
Speaking during the ceremony marking the handing over of office to the new Executive Body, the incoming chairperson for the Women Parliamentary Caucus Josephine Moses Lado urged the leadership of the country to stand firm with the women parliamentarian caucus to implement their plans for good solidarity between the South Sudan women.
“I thank the outgoing leadership of Women Parliamentarian Caucus for their remarkable work in the past. We, the incoming leadership will build on your work and tasks that you left for us. In our planning, we will be starting from where you stopped,” she said.
Josephine added that their first priority is to review the strategic plans and action plan of the outgoing leadership.
“We acknowledge the continued support received from UNMISS and CEPO in making the activities of the women parliamentary caucus operating. We as the parliamentary caucus are calling for support to fund the activities of the women caucus,” she added.
Meanwhile, Peterson Magoola the Country Representative of UN Women in South Sudan said that the UN Women highlighted a long-standing support for women’s full inclusion and active participation in the public sphere across the globe.
He retreated that the UN Women is committed to the advancement of gender equality and the empowerment of women as has been evidenced over the past years and will continue to support on institutional capacity strengthening capacity of the parliament as they work together to ensure the achievement of gender sensitive parliamentary reforms.
“UN Women looks forward to our continued partnership of striving towards bettering the lives of women, girls, boys and men in South Sudan,” he said.
For her part, Maria Makabiito, the DSRSG’s representative congratulated the members of parliament who are women for launching a unified caucus to collectively lobby, advocate and enact policies and laws in the legislative assembly for the interest of women and girls’ human rights. She highlighted that the mission is committed and support in full, equal and meaningful participation of women in nation building to make peace sustainable and the implementation of the UN Security Council’s Resolutions on the protection of women and girls against sexual violence.