Analyst warns allocating quotas limit South Sudanese women from leadership

By Ruot George

Leadership roles in South Sudan have been decided for women with a quota allocation duped the 35 percent affirmative action.

Such allocations limits outright participation of women in leadership roles in the country, Prof Chaplain Kara, the Deputy Dean for Journalism and Communication at the University of Juba said.

According to Prof Kara, women in the war-torn country should not accept men to decide percentages and quotas in the public and political space for them.

“It’s an oppressive mechanism,” Prof Kara said at a workshop organized by CARE International about amplifying women voices’ in the media.

 “The business of men controlling women in political and public affairs on deciding quotas for women amount to oppression.”

The 35 percent affirmative action for women has been majorly manifested in the peace agreement being implemented in the country.

The agreement reached in 2018 aims at ending six years of crisis which left 400,000 people dead and displaced four million others, many of whom were women and children.

Political is dominated by men in South Sudan and therefore the need to slot in the quota at all political levels in the country.

But Prof Kara said women should use the legal framework provided for in the Universal declaration of human rights and the transitional constitution of South Sudan 2011 to seek positions.

“Everyone has the right, everyone including women, it does not say men,” Prof Kara said of article 19 of the Universal declaration of human rights.

Equally “article 24 of the transitional constitution of South Sudan also says everyone has the right,” he said.

“The policy of deciding quotas for women in politics such as 35 percent affirmative action is a tool by men to limit the participation of women.”

He described the policy as “null and void and women must not allow this policy to appear in the permanent constitution.”