In South Sudan, we supported 39 community action groups (CAGs) to collectively design and implement 12 seed-funded action plans. Eight of these addressed GBV prevention and response, three focused on youth engagement in peacebuilding activities, and one raised awareness of the negative effects of drug abuse. CAGs also successfully resolved multiple violent conflicts in this period: one between Muok and Thony communities over cattle raiding in Tonj South; one between Wau and Kuac South communities in Lol-thou over land and farming issues; and another between Buya and Didinga communities in Budi County over access to common grazing land.
We are seeing evidence of security forces being more responsive to community concerns. In Nyakuron South, Central Equatoria State, CAGs mapped out hotspot areas of insecurity and reported them to the local police authorities. In Wau, the Deputy Police Commissioner deployed police at the Hai Jedid police post in response to a community request for more police in the area.
Together with Women Development Group, Women Initiative for Development Organisation, and Women Vision and Voice for Change, Saferworld has been working with communities, authorities, CSOs, women-led and women’s rights organisations, and UN agencies in the Wunlit Triangle to enhance women’s and girls’ abilities to enjoy better mental health and peacebuilding outcomes.
We are doing this through improving access to mental health and psychosocial support and to GBV referral pathways, strengthening government policies to improve freedom from GBV caused by conflict, and enabling women and girls to meaningfully participate in economic and political decision-making and social life at family/ household, community, state and national levels.
With our partner Root of Generation, we facilitated a three-day dialogue bringing together 183 representatives from the Buya and Didinga communities in Eastern Equatoria, who had witnessed increasingly violent conflict (including homicide) after changes in rainfall patterns resulted in cattle grazing in different areas. Following the dialogue, the communities put their differences aside and peaceful co-existence was restored.
