JUBA: UN Women and WFP agrees on working together until 2020
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UN Women Country Office South Sudan and WFP Country Office South Sudan signed a Memorandum of Agreement towards transformational gender equality and women’s empowerment programmes within their agencies’ work in South Sudan. The Memorandum of Understanding which the leaders of both agencies applauded, was seen as a significant step towards serving vulnerable women, men, youth, girls and boys in South Sudan with a focused gender analytical lens.
Adnan Khan, the Representative of WFP South Sudan highlighted that his organization has in the past few years promoted and mainstreamed gender equality and women’s empowerment across all its operations. He added that considering the decades of war as well as societal and cultural challenges that drive gender inequalities and discrimination in South Sudan, there is now more than ever a recognition that government has competing priorities and actors such as UN agencies had a role to play in support of the national reconstruction agenda to ensure that gender equality and empowerment of women remains everyone’s responsibility.
He added that WFP recently signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare and therefore the new agreement will mean that both WFP and UN Women will jointly support the Ministry and the nation.
Funmi Balogun, Representative of UN Women in South Sudan stated that she was pleased to sign the inspiring agreement with WFP, and to collaborate and deliver together recognizing the comparative advantage of both agencies, and opportunities offered to scale up interventions that are not only lifesaving for vulnerable women and girls, but also in strengthening their personal skills for recovery, transformation and empowerment, and improved abilities to deal with complex challenges, including on speaking out against GBV. She added that it was important to pool resources and skills together to ensure that women and girls are important players in the discourse and direction of a post conflict sustainable South Sudan,
The two agencies promised to work together, share technical knowledge, enhance efficiency and ensure value for money to strengthen the work led by the Ministry of Gender Child and Social Welfare.