Plus: The world’s newest nation and the music that shaped it Global Dispatch | The Guardian
The news from South Sudan over the past 10 years has been relentlessly grim. The joy and celebrations that marked independence on 9 July 2011 have been replaced by reports of sexual violence, conflict, economic instability and hunger. The Covid-19 pandemic has added to the country’s problems. A report earlier this year predicted that thousands of people will die of hunger in 2021 as the economic fallout of the pandemic and the effects of the climate crisis take their toll. This week, the UN food report said more than 60% of South Sudan’s population are now considered severely food insecure. It’s hard to be optimistic about the future of the world’s youngest country. But there was a glimmer of hope in Lizzy Davies’ interview with Gloria Soma, the director of the Juba-based Titi Foundation. The foundation is working to support women and children with supplies of food, soap and clean water – and by addressing the endemic problem of sexual violence. As Soma told Davies, there was a “weary, trauma-inured acceptance” of the murder, rape and abuse women have, and are, subject to. The foundation is now working with other women’s rights groups to end the weariness and bring justice for survivors. The work that Soma and many other women are doing across the world will need support to grow. The vote that sealed the £4bn cuts in UK aid on Tuesday will be a blow. But $40bn (£30bn) was pledged by governments, businesses and philanthropic foundations at the recent Generation Equality Forum to support women’s rights and end global inequalities. We wait to see where the money will go. But it would be wrong if a significant slice didn’t end up in the hands of local women’s rights groups such as Soma’s, who see the need first-hand, know what their communities want, and are in it for the long haul. Liz Ford, deputy editor, Global Development Photograph of an artist painting the South Sudan flag on a woman's cheek during the country's 10th anniversary since independence in Jube, 9 July, by Andreea Câmpeanu/Getty |
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