The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has appealed to parliamentarians in the country to emphasise gender perspectives and women’s rights in the formulation of laws and all legislative forums.

“The legislative assembly plays a very prominent role in democracy. It is important for us as UNMISS to share knowledge and to discuss issues of the welfare of women in general and the welfare of children in particular as well as the general human rights perspective,” said Alfred Zulu, UNMISS head of human rights in South Sudan’s Bor area, as he called on lawmakers to incorporate women and children’s views in their deliberations on matters pertaining to their welfare.

The call was made during a training workshop on human rights issues in Bor, an area in South Sudan’s Jonglei region, where women and children continue to experience violations of their rights, including the right to own property, to education and to choose a marriage partner.

Attended by fifty participants working in the areas of women and children’s rights, the workshop on “international and national standards on the protection and promotion of women and child rights” was facilitated by UNMISS’s human rights division.

“It is the hope of the human rights division and UNMISS that some of the discussions we have this morning can bear fruits and can be included in the forums of the Jonglei state legislative assembly,” said Alfred Zulu.

Jonglei Legislative Assembly Speaker Charles Manyang Awuol concurred that people’s representatives must be at the forefront of promoting gender equality. He commended the United Nations Mission for creating an environment to discuss women’s rights issues.

“I thank UNMISS and I think these issues are very important – very important to us as people who are representing the people. I am very grateful also to the other institutions that have come to join us here in the assembly to discuss these issues, and the way they have been presented,” he said.

The one-day training on women and child rights attracted some fifty representatives of the judiciary, legal, administration, police and civil society organizations focusing on women’s and children’s right, besides the parliamentarians.

The freedoms and entitlements of women and girls of all ages in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil affairs continue to be downtrodden in South Sudan, as men batter their wives, misappropriate and use women’s salaries, force their daughters into early marriage,  and deny women rights to inherit property.