Caught in the Middle
CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE Gender Inequality and Rampant SGBV in Wau, South Sudan November 2019
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Cover artwork by David Kigozi Design & Print by Revolve Tack Ltd
SIHA Network First published in November 2019 All rights reserved. Materials may be freely disseminated and used for educational, activist and non-profit purposes, with due acknowledgment of the source. Otherwise, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network
Caught in the Middle
CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE
Gender Inequality and Rampant SGBV in Wau, South Sudan 1 November 2019
Women and girls living in South Sudan’s Wau Town, situated in the former Western Bahr el Ghazal state have experienced severe sexual violence, exploitation, abuse and harassment in the present-day conflict. In addition to ethnically targeted rape and other crimes of sexual violence, women and girls have suffered from various gendered inequalities originating well before the cyclical outbreaks of war and produced by social norms and practices that promote discrimination and subordination
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The information used in this report was collected and compiled by long-time SIHA Network affiliated researcher, Alicia Luedke in collaboration with SIHA Network staff - Hala Alkarib, Kimberley Armstrong, Nilofar Kayhan and Faith James in late 2018 and early 2019
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Table of Contents Executive Summary......................................................................5 Introduction.................................................................................8 Methodology..............................................................................11 Context......................................................................................13 Wau...........................................................................................16 Gendered Roles, Sexual Violence and Transformation................20 Bride-Wealth..........................................................................20 Burden of Responsibility........................................................23 SGBV Against Women and Girls...........................................25 SGBV Against Men and Boys.................................................27 SGBV in the Secondary School Setting..................................28 Gender Relations and Youth in Volatile State.............................32 Case Study Vignette: Female and Male Youth Gangs..............33 Key Observations.......................................................................39 Recommendations..................................................................41 References..................................................................................44
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Executive Summary In recent years, South Sudan has gained an unfavorable reputation for the frequent violations and abuse that are committed against women and girls. Much of this reputation has been gained through reports on sexual violence used as a weapon of war during the civil conflict that has racked the country on and off since shortly after its secession from Sudan in 2011. However, it is not only conflict-related sexual violence that has negatively impacted on the well-being of South Sudanese women and girls; multiple forms of violence exist and this violence has intensified in recent years due to a number of conflict and socio-economic factors. Through qualitative research that was undertaken in Wau Town at the end of 2018 and early 2019, this paper seeks to examine the dynamics of violence experienced by women and girls, to understand the root causes, and to provide policy recommendations on how this can be addressed. The key observations from this paper demonstrate that in addition to ongoing sexual violence, bride-wealth based marriage practices, transactional sex, and disproportionate burdens to provide financial and care work for the family, significantly undermine the freedom and safety of women and youth in Wau. The results also demonstrate that addressing this violence will require concerted efforts to transform the deep-seated patriarchal customs and practices that have shaped the particular response to conflict and poverty in the country. The consequences of years of conflict and underdevelopment in South Sudan have been immense. With the collapse of the economy and acute food shortages, families and individuals must often resort to extreme measures to meet basic needs. Though the signing of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCISS) in September 2018 has brought relative calm, acts of violence continue to be a mainstay of life in South Sudan as competition for resources, crime, and localized conflict have yet to be addressed. Moreover, this climate of insecurity and economic crisis has only served to reinforce or exacerbate certain practices and behaviors that devalue women and youth. The lack of livelihood opportunities and food shortages have lead to an increase in the commodification of women’s bodies, particularly via the practices of bride wealth and survival sex. Moreover, women and youth are particularly
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targeted with sexual violence by armed groups and men who may seek to deal with their own form of victimization as a result of the economy and the conflict through SGBV. As a signatory to relevant international human rights instruments and having instituted gender progressive policies within the South Sudan governmental framework, the South Sudanese government can and should be held accountable to the youth and women it represents. The government must establish concrete measures for policy implementation in coordination with civil society actors, with investment in social and welfare programs to complement existing civil society structures. Women must be integrated into key ministries beyond the stereotypical institutions. There needs to be a significant increase in the number of women in teaching positions and girls in schools. A sustainable program for sensitizing and educating officials and strategic points of contact from many different sectors (most importantly education and law enforcement) to compassionately and competently handle SGBV reporting and referrals must be implemented. The international community needs to develop all humanitarian and development programming through a gender sensitive lens and ensure that local groups are thoroughly engaged in order to effectively understand and target relevant responses to evolving social dynamics (e.g. youth social dynamics). However, this must be done without compromising the work of CSOs and activists who have direct knowledge and experience of the dynamics of gender inequality in South Sudan. As such, redirecting resources to support national civil society-led responses is fundamental to reducing risks for potential harm to the situation of women and girls and for raising increasing vulnerabilities by way of intervention, for instance food aid at specific distribution points. Most importantly, challenging the beliefs, norms, and practices that justify or normalize domestic and sexual violence and dehumanizing stereotypes regarding women and youth needs to become a priority agenda for the government of South Sudan, and any other actor who wishes to contribute to improving the status and lived experience of women in South Sudan. Communities within the country need to be supported to establish a strengthened civil society that will lead in the transformation
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of the country into a nation state that can address and contribute to peace transformation processes .The current patterns of international aid and limiting role of civil society into subcontracting is rather problematic and disempowering for civil society. South Sudan civil society must be held accountable as a partner in the country’s transformation and be supported to take the front role in challenging the country’s complex security and development issues, such as SGBV.
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Introduction In its short history as a nation, South Sudan has been consumed by civil war, regional political tensions, and a failure to successfully establish or sustain nation-building projects. This situation has engendered the emergence of new, and in some instances, old hurdles to women’s advancement. On the one hand, the failure of the nation-building process has led to the rise of new, more militarized and securitized forms of public authority that seek to exert power through the control of violence. On the other hand, notwithstanding the dramatic shift of responsibilities experienced by women who have become the sole breadwinners for their families and communities across the Horn, women have not benefited from any significant changes to their position in society, instead they often face exacerbated forms of patriarchal dominance such as increases in domestic violence, sexual assault, rape and early and forced marriage. Women, and other marginalized groups, such as youth, end up caught in the middle, trapped between multiple pressures associated with war and its attendant effects on resource access and militarization, as well as the intensification of customary– oftentimes highly conservative and patriarchal practices. South Sudan gained independence on July 9th, 2011 offering hope that there would be an end to the mistreatment that South Sudanese people had experienced through decades of war and underdevelopment and potentially providing women with an opportunity to carve out a space for their empowerment and progress.1 Between the years 2015 and 2018, South Sudan undertook several progressive measures, including signing and ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW),the African Protocol on the Rights of Women, and the Convention on the Rights of a Child (CRC). South Sudan has also established a Ministry of Gender and Child Welfare and a quota system enabling women’s participation in legislative bodies of up to 30% has been enacted. Nevertheless, any optimism was shortlived. Despite institutionalization of the rights of women and girls in law and policy frameworks, after the country seceded from the Khartoum government in the north, there has been little substantive change in the 1
See, Ali, Nada Mustafa. (2011). Gender and State Building in South Sudan. USIP Special Report No. 298.
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actual position of South Sudanese women, who continue to be subjected to discrimination and violence, and consistently denied access to decisions that affect their lives. The outbreak of a new cycle of civil war in South Sudan on December 15th, 2013 has only exacerbated the situation, as women and girls became the direct target of widespread sexual violence by actors competing in an increasingly volatile political marketplace where everything, including women’s bodies, can be commoditized. While the latest iteration of conflict in South Sudan has seen a shift in the role of women providing for their families and communities in new and extreme ways, for the most part, violence and exclusion directed at them has grown, deteriorating any hope of civil advancement that independence may have once provided. Today, South Sudanese women and girls are vulnerable to various forms of victimization and abuse, including the violent reinforcement of discriminatory gender norms both on and off the battlefield as individuals and communities seek to combat the rapidly shifting social order in South Sudanese society. Given the continued precarious position of women in South Sudan, and the need to aggressively promote structural and normative changes to improve women’s status and decision-making, SIHA Network has commissioned this policy paper which seeks to detail the context within which women and youth are struggling to survive and provide recommendations on how to improve it. The study relies on primary research undertaken in Wau Town of former Bahr el Ghazal state where SIHA has been operating for more than a decade-and-a-half. Research was conducted in November 2018 and February 2019; and included focus group discussions and interviews held with women, youth, teachers, religious and traditional leaders and a number of government officials and service providers. Extracting from SIHA’s deep rooted understanding of regional gender issues and extensive experience working to eradicate SGBV, this policy paper explores the dynamics of gender, violence and change in Wau Town. The paper demonstrates how these changes have led to the violent entrenchment of women’s subordinate position in South Sudanese society. It explores the myriad ways in which
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conflict, food insecurity and economic decline have impacted gender and social relations, drawing out the root causes of violence against women and girls, in Wau Town. In conclusion, the paper makes inescapably clear the importance of understanding the dynamic complexity of women and girls’ subordination so that remedial measures are aimed at the root causes and not isolated issues in order to achieve systemic and fundamental change.
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Methodology The information employed for this policy paper was collected during a baseline assessment for and by SIHA in Wau Town between the end of November and start of December 2018. The assessment looked at the high prevalence of sexual violence against teenage girls and root causes behind the rampant sexual violence. It also examined the available response and prevention mechanisms, utilizing tools, including key informant interviews (KIIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs), as well as a review of secondary sources and documentary evidence acquired over the course of time that the researcher visited Wau Town. Assessment areas encompassed questions that were meant to probe people’s broader understandings of SGBV, why it occurs, its consequences and other factors connected to the enactment of such violence, namely against women and girls, but also against men and boys. This policy paper is based on questions that also touched upon existing gendered norms and practices, including the role of women and girls in household and community-level decision-making, in addition to information collected during the course of the assessment. Follow-up research was conducted in mid-February 2019 and focused on trying to secure a more detailed picture of how local interpretations of gender and SGBV have evolved, particularly amongst non-state forms of public authority, such as customary chiefs, spiritual leaders and youth gangs.2 The first assessment in November and December involved a total of 9 KIIs and 14 FGDs with 112 participants across Wau Town, including in the Wau POC site on the base of UNMISS. Exactly 86 of those interviewed were youth and adolescents from secondary schools in the area. The follow-up research was comprised of 15 KIIs and 4 FGDs with 43 participants. Target groups included customary chiefs, spiritual leaders, civil society activists, youth, adolescents, women’s leaders and gang members. 2
The research conducted with gang members and other actors in mid-February 2019 by Alicia Luedke was assisted by a grant from the Conflict Research Programme managed by the Understanding Violent Conflict Program at the Social Science Research Council, in partnership with the London School of Economics and Political Science, and with funding from the UK Department for International Development. However, the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies.
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The research, being qualitative in nature, aimed to gather highly contextualized information on the dynamics and drivers of continued violence, especially SGBV in Wau Town, and people’s attitudes and behaviors with respect to gendered norms and practices. Akin to other work carried out in South Sudan and SIHA Network’s research acumen with in-depth documentation of experiences of marginalization and deprivation, the two successive assessments emphasized people’s subjective perceptions and interpretations of violence and gender in its local context. The assessment utilized a feminist lens with a view towards both capturing the lived experiences of research participants, as well as exposing underlying structures of power and domination in South Sudanese society.3 Likewise, research placed the voices of the participants, including those both impacted and implicated in violence, at the front and center of the assessment and follow up research that occurred.4
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See, Huser, Catherine. (2018). Conflict and gender study-South Sudan: Addressing root causes programme. ACORD.
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See, Plan International. (2018). Adolescent girls in crisis: Voices from South Sudan.
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Context South Sudan became the world’s newest state on July 9th, 2011, marking what many had hoped would be a permanent end to the violence that had plagued the south during a decades long struggle against the Khartoum government in the north of Sudan. Once again, however, any optimism was short-lived. Years of conflict led to severe underdevelopment and South Sudanese leaders were unable to deliver on the dividends that peace and independence had initially promised to provide. Just two years after separating from the north on December 15th, 2013, the country slid back into a brutal civil war as a result of political tensions in the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), specifically between President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka and former Vice-President turned rebel leader, Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer who quickly formed the SPLM/A-In Opposition (IO). Within hours of the conflict erupting, South Sudanese citizens were being deliberately targeted on the basis of their ethnicity forced to presume political allegiances as tensions and grievances from past periods of intra-South fighting came to the fore. In reality, the root causes of the civil war are complex, ranging from fears of ethnic marginalization, long-standing disputes over land, and a desire to maintain control over the country’s resources – all of which have resulted in violent competition between warring parties over the past decades.5 A number of the issues witnessed today, have their foundations in the second Sudanese civil war between 1983 and 2005, wherein the south, under the then liberation movement, Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) were locked in a violent struggle with the north. President Salva Kiir and his former deputy, Riek Machar, were on separate sides of the divide within the SPLA at the time with both leaders drawing on and manipulating ethnic ties in order to mobilize support with the average southerner caught in a vicious cycle of intra-South violence, which served to inflame and reify tensions between ethnic groups. Unaddressed, the 5
See Vuylsteke, Sarah. (2018). Identity and self-determination: The Fertit opposition in South Sudan. HSBA-Small Arms Survey Briefing Paper. Retrieved from: http://www.smallarmssurveysudan.org/fileadmin/docs/briefing-papers/ HSBA-BP-Fertit.pdf; De Waal, Alex. (2014). When Kleptocracy becomes insolvement: Brute causes of the civil war in South Sudan. African Affairs 113/452, 357-369.