By Akol Madut Ngong
Central Equatoria State ministry of Gender, child and social welfare has called for the establishment of Safe Houses in Collaboration with Government, International and National Stakeholders for handling gender cases.
Bullen Soro the state minister of gender said it is the responsibility of the ministry of gender to address the issue of child marriage and forced marriage, by providing a safer house for survivors of the same.
“We don’t have safe houses in Juba where the girls who are forced to marriage against their will, will run to, we don’t have police station where they keep and take back after finding solution” he said.
Soro is advocating for the establishment of safety house for gender cases. He made the appeal during the celebrations of International Rural Women’s Day under the theme: “Give Chances to Rural Women for Peace & Sustainable Development in conjunction of Global theme: “Rural Women Rise & Claim Your Basic Rights to Sustainable Development”.
The minister for gender in Central Equatoria State said they are consolidating peace through agriculture saying if a family is in hungry, the family that lack food will always be in trouble, and it is in the intention or the hope of state government to ensure that food is available.
“We are asking our partners to improve the life of rural women, we are asking World Food Programme to provide seed to needy rural women and the seed must be a germinating seed, not the seed that are planted and they don’t germinates,” he stated.
“We are asking ourselves to avail the chances to those rural women to do something to benefit to all of us & that is a provision of food” Soro said.
However, the chairperson Specialized Committee for Gender in the Revitalized National Transitional Assembly Lily Kiden said the international rural women’s Day appreciate women resilience and achievements and equally mindful of the sacrifices vowed by them in their daily life in the rural areas.
“The challenges rural women are facing in their daily life are reals, they are serious and they are many, rural women suffer from poverty, from poverty they face, multiple trauma of discrimination” she stated.
Kiden stressed that the issue of forced marriages has become a serious challenge facing them as women of South Sudan and we want the phenomenon to end so that women will survive and preserve in their country.