Rumbek, 29 November, 2019 / 1:58 am (ACI Africa).
In the context of the United Nation’s (UN) International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women marked on November 25, the UN Peacekeeping Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) reached out to the clergy, religious, and laity ministering in the Catholic diocese of Rumbek in a four-day training focusing on ways to deal with Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), a participant has told ACI Africa.
“The training was a UNMISS and Human Rights Department sensitization workshop on SGBV in collaboration with the Diocese of Rumbek in Lakes state,” Fr. Luka Dor, a clergy of Rumbek diocese told ACI Africa in an interview Thursday, November 28.
“SGBV has been there since the beginning but no one was paying attention to it,” South Sudanese Fr. Dor who is the Parish Priest of the Holy Family Cathedral Parish in the township of Rumbek said, referencing the culture of holding women in subordination.
He added, “Some SGBV is part of the Sudanese culture and others are caused by war.”
It is for the reason that the practice is embedded in the culture, the cleric noted, that the workshop was undertaken by UNMISS as a civic education initiative, challenging outdated cultural practices that seem to continue obstructing access to justice for many victims and survivors of SGBV in the world’s youngest nation.
