When the women of South Sudan welcomed the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, they were aware that true democracy will be realised only when their human rights are realised. The amount of space given to the Sudanese woman in leadership has never been more crucial than now, as the country stands at a cross-roads.
(left) Women who were forced to flee their homes due to fighting, carry emergency food rations.
Women's rights activists, senior military figures and top United Nations officials met in New York to discuss what the world body's ex-humanitarian chief Jan Egeland described as one of the biggest conspiracies of silence in history, the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. The talks focused on the lack of female involvement in peace negotiations, and on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1820, which for the first time acknowledges the use of sexual violence in conflict as a tactic of war.
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