“When we first built the newest nation in the world, the women of our country—our daughters, our wives, our sisters—participated and contributed equally to the hope for a peaceful, prosperous future for everyone,” said General Johnson Okot, leader of the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF) as he addressed 40 of his commanders, men and women, who gathered in Juba to attend an UNMISS-facilitated training on preventing conflict-related sexual violence.

However, when civil war broke out across South Sudan in 2013, a mere two years after the country declared independence from its northern neighbor Sudan, women and young girls were among the worse sufferers and their bodies became an extension of the battlefield.

Today, this young nation is on the cusp of being able to establish itself as a true democracy with a peace agreement in place and steps being taken to create a unified national army.

Much remains to be done, though, to ensure that the rights and dignity of women and girls are consistently upheld.

“Since 2013, South Sudan has had a history of conflict-related sexual violence and rape. This has resulted in it being listed in the Secretary-General’s annual reports,” said Huma Khan, Senior Women’s Protection Adviser, UNMISS.

Ms. Khan explained that there is credible evidence against listed countries to show that they have, at some point or the other, been complicit in using violence against women as a weapon of war. Consequently, restrictions are imposed on such countries.

“The way forward for such a country is to explore training opportunities with the United Nations for members of its army, to come up with an action plan and implement concrete steps to address this problem,” she stated.

To demonstrate its commitment to ending violence against women, select members of the SSPDF teamed up with partners from the UN peacekeeping mission to come up with a training curriculum that would enable them to trickle down learning on preventing conflict-related sexual violence to everyone in their ranks. This, in turn, culminated in a two-day session based on the final detailed training programme agreed upon by the SSPDF and UNMISS.

“No soldier has the right to anybody’s personal property, to claim innocent lives, to cause harm to a child and, most importantly, to violate the dignity of any woman. That is the message that we want you to carry to everyone who serves under your command,” emphasized Shailesh Tinaiker, UNMISS Force Commander, while speaking to participants. 

According to Ms. Khan, this initial exercise aimed at encouraging meaningful dialogue on existing action plans to eliminate violence against women by strengthening accountability within the SSPDF and educating every member about their national and international obligations on protecting civilians from sexual violence.

 “We hope it will become an integral aspect of all future trainings the SSPDF conduct among their ranks; used in staff colleges as well as in ad-hoc learning provided by them to soldiers,” she added, “because no country can be truly independent without protecting the rights of its women.”