The Strengthening, Promotion of, and respect for Women's Rights in Southern Sudan

African woman and Child Feature Service with collaboration the Sustainable Community Outreach Programmes for Empowerment (SCOPE), a local non governmental organization which promotes holistic social transformation, empowerment and community development in South Sudan is implementing the UNIFEM project with the objective to strengthen, promote and respect of women’s rights in Southern Sudan sought to empower women in South Sudan through the media.

The project seeks to empower women in South Sudan through the media. It is also geared towards building the capacity of women as leaders in the countdown to elections as well as giving them visibility through the media, equipping them with the necessary skills and knowledge and competencies to allow them to take up lead positions in the legislative branch of the government, public offices and civil society at all levels AWC has often used a multimedia strategy approach through advocacy, capacity building, and research and media technical support in order to support women’s participation in democratic governance and decision making structures.

The project recognizes that even though there is expanded democratic space created by the Comprehensive peace Agreement (CPA) signed in January, 2005 and heralded by the 25% Affirmative Action that has seen women ascend into leadership positions in South Sudan, women are still faced with a lot of barriers names access to information, inadequate education, lack of capacity, cultural barriers among other issues. Their numerical strength cannot translate to equity and influencing of major bills coming from Parliament.

The main objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive advocacy programme with a bid to bring the voices of the marginalized into the mainstream through the media namely the women, children, other marginalized groups as well as the disabled.

Using MDG 3 and Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender Equality to achieve women’s rights in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania

The Gender Justice Barometer is a regional instrument which will be developed by the project and AWC intends to use it to measure the achievement of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in line with the MDG3 and Commonwealth Gender Action Plan in East Africa to achieve the intended results of prioritizing women’s leadership. Consequently, one of the key targets of this project will be to improve women’s access to decision making forums in the three countries. The project will make use of the recent significant policy shifts such as the new constitution in the case of Kenya. A major objective of the project will be making claims on the new policies – claims that take cognizance on the role of women in peace building, recovery, development and participation in democratic governance. Thus, project activities will include lobbying for the actual endorsement and realisation of the more significant policy provisos, such as the 30% quota for women in public office as well as in all governance structure

Land is one of the most important resources in the country. It is key to economic growth and plays a central role in national and local development. The management of land is a critical requirement for sustainable development and the Draft National Land Policy addresses the various opportunities to reverse the negative trends and to optimize the possibilities for sustainable development.

This section deals with the issue of Land Reform in Kenya

The Media, Sexuality and Reproductive Health programme is designed to tease out critical issues in the area of sexuality and reproductive health; bring out their gender dimensions, and advocate for their coverage in the media.

National Discourses on Poverty, Inequality and Growth

The gist of this programme involves using the media to create awareness to the public on inequalities in Kenya and how it affects their growth in terms of economic decision, political decisions and how resources are used. The project seeks to engage with the editors of the media houses on how effectively to cover inequality issues while at the same time train journalists throughout the country on how to mainstream inequalities in their articles with a view of impacting policy.

Partners of this project are:

• ActionAid International Kenya
  
• African Woman and Child Feature Service
• Society for International Development (SID) in collaboration with SIDA and the Ministry of Planning and Development
  

A result of the project was the National Conference on Equity and Growth. This conference was held from 22nd - 23rd May 2006 in Nairobi, Kenya.

More on the project: http://www.inequalitykenya.or.ke

A project of African Woman and Child Feature Service(AWCFS) in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa(OSI-EA).