South Sudan launches the Maputo Protocol for the protection of women’s rights
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According to a UN women report released in September 2022, at the current rate of progress it will take up to 286 years to close gender gaps in legal protection and remove discriminatory laws, 140 years for women to be represented equally in positions of power and leadership in the workplace, and at least 40 years to achieve equal representation in national parliaments. South Sudan is progressing and rallying towards closing the gender gap, being committed, and making huge strides towards achieving gender equality.
On the 24th February 2023, following the international conference on women's transformational leadership that was held in Juba that brought about four hundred women from all the ten States and three Administrative Areas of South Sudan, and African women from 15 countries, President Salva Kiir Mayar acceded the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa - known as the Maputo Protocol. South Sudan is the 44th country in Africa to ratify the protocol on women’s rights.
Speaking at the Launch of the Maputo Protocol in Juba on the 18th of July UN women Deputy Country representative Rukaya Mohammed said that “The Maputo protocol is one of the world’s most progressive and comprehensive women’s rights instruments, with a purpose to protect, promote and affirm women’s human rights to exercise civil and political rights; economic, social, and cultural rights as well as collective and solidarity rights, further reaffirming the universality, indivisibility, and interdependency of human rights for African women.”
The Speaker of the Government of National Unity, Rt Hon Nunu Kumba, commended the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare for the role it has played and for depositing this instrument of women’s rights on the 19th of June to the African Union Commission, saying “This is the manifestation of our commitment as the government of South Sudan to uphold relevant laws that impact on the lives of the people of South Sudan.”
Hon Aya Benjamin Minister of Gender, Child and Social Welfare stated that the launch of the Maputo protocol is a significant milestone, a ground breaking achievement in south Sudan, and it shows the Government’s commitment to uphold human rights gender equality and the empowerment of women in South Sudan.