Approximately 200 students at Dr. John Garang Memorial University of Science and Technology have been trained by UNMISS on gender and HIV awareness.

The one-day session, organized by the UNMISS HIV Aids Unit and Gender Unit, sought to empower the students, a mere 18 of whom were women, with the relevant information to enable them to stimulate dialogue in their various communities and thereby act as agents for change.

Gender officer Susan Sesay stressed the importance of sending girls to school.  

“Sending girls to school and making sure they keep going to school and even move on to higher education is good, but if you just marry girls at very early age, we are not helping them, we are disempowering them. We are making some of them sell sex as a means for survival,” Ms. Sesay said.

Susan added that providing scholarships for girls from poorer homes; raising public awareness on the importance of education for boys and girls and engendering national laws are affirmative actions that state authorities can adopt to promote gender equality.

The importance of ending the stigma against HIV positive women, which tends to be worse than the stigma suffered by HIV positive men, and to promote voluntary counseling and testing was also discussed.

“There is a link between women’s vulnerability to HIV and gender inequalities. For example, in some cultures there is a belief that HIV exists because of women’s promiscuity, which is not true because HIV affects all populations,” Ms. Sesay emphasized.

Mary Ayen, a student of management sciences, stressed that correct and consistent use of condoms contributes to preventing HIV, and added that male circumcision can also reduce the contamination of the virus.

“We learn how to control HIV by using condom, and my advice to my brothers is: control yourselves and use condoms,” she said.

The state minister for health, Dr. Angok Gordon Kuol, told the participants that the prevalence of HIV in Jonglei is approximately 3 per cent. He urged the students to stand up and sensitize members of their communities on the risks of HIV.

“The level of awareness should be higher, particularly among educated people like you it should be 100 per cent so that we can fight and reduce HIV infections.”