Regina Issa, Director General, Ministry of Gender, Child and Social welfare speaking during the stakeholders review and validation of the South Sudanese women's charter. (Charles Wote/Eye Radio).

The Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare, in partnership with development agencies, on Tuesday launched a charter to raise awareness against laws discriminating against women in the country.

The South Sudan Women’s Charter was developed in December 2021, by the gender ministry with support from UN Women. It combines the priorities and demands of women and girls in the constitution-making process and the permanent constitution.

The charter further outlines the need for legal policy and interventions to address the concerns of women and girls.

These include women’s participation in politics and public life, education and training, marriage and family, property ownership and inheritance as well as health and reproductive rights, economic and social welfare rights.

Other necessities equality and freedom from discrimination, special protection of elderly and women with disabilities, protection against gender-based violence, access to justice, environment, natural resources, and climate security; and public finance management reforms.

Regina Issa, the Director General at the National Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare said the charter underwent consultations with stakeholders in the states and local levels.

“You know in the women charter that we have arrived at today, we went through the states, consulting with the women at the state level and also comparing the laws that we have and what women are going through in South Sudan,” Ms. Issa said while speaking on behalf of the Minister of Gender, Ayaa Benjamin.

“We found that our laws are very discriminative I don’t want to talk much on this, and we really got so many stories that women are going through especially issues related in the family.”

According to Regina, those consulted revealed that some South Sudanese laws do not guarantee women’s rights to divorce, property inheritance, childcare and child marriage.

She assured the women across the country that those laws shall be reviewed during the constitution making.

“The report on the review of women has come on time. Together, the discriminative law can be worked on so that the new law that will come out,” she explained.

“The permanent constitution will not be like the former laws. It will look at all those issues that you women of South Sudan have discussed in your various state, and they will consider that some of these laws that are discriminatory are removed and they should put in their minds that men and women are equal in the law.”

The consultation was targeting the civil society, state parliamentarians, schoolgirls, chiefs, persons with disabilities, elderly women, women in business and private sector, and government officials in the state capitals of the ten states of South Sudan.