By Tereza Jeremiah Chuei
In a Statement extended to No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper, the Executive Director of Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO) Edmund Yakani said it is high time that government should ensure all forms of discrimination against certain sections of the population is abolished, stating that especially population of persons with disabilities and people living with HIV/AIDS.
The World marked the World Population Day this Monday 11th July under the theme; “Towards a resilient future for all-Harnessing opportunities and ensuring rights and choices for all”.
Mr. Yakani said the aim of this year’s theme is to make the world population day speak very well in the context of South Sudan.
“CEPO will collaborate with the Transitional National Legislative Assembly standing specialized committee on population and other relevant government institutions on population affairs advocacy for influencing our government planning and budgeting process,” Yakani said the statement.
“Our country is marking the world population day at a moment that we are losing big number of our population per week recently estimated at rate 20-50 lives through our early warning system due to deadly inter-communal violence. While child abduction is still a practice today in our society,” he continued.
The CEPO’s Executive Director said, as civil society they are raising loud voices on issues of government commitment on ensuring the population of persons with disabilities is taken seriously.
He said they are conducting such event to inform government in the planning and budgeting process should be a genuine consideration of disability inclusion.
“Having official government declared population of persons with disabilities will help development partners to take practical actions and decisions for successful inclusion of persons with disabilities,” he pointed out.
Yakani stressed that the government should take serious steps on matters of population affairs, adding that it is critical in planning and budgeting. He said that the society is facing numerous shocks that keep on bouncing.
The activist said, it requires serious and consistent government political commitment, because the threats of HIV-AIDS is real within the society.
“We are struck with the alarming increase in new cases of 39,000 among the young population at age range of 18 to 19 years old from 2019 to 2022 declared by Dr. Harriet Akello Pasquale, who is the Director for HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections at the Ministry of Health disclosed the data dated 1st June, 2022 in Juba,” Yakani stressed in the release.
The World population day offers a moment to celebrate human progress. Our world despite its challenges, is one where higher shares of people are educated and live healthier lives than at any previous point in history.